Free Range
By definition a free range chicken should have freedom for at least 3 hours per day. I am more concerned about free food and energy consumption. It seems the happy norm is 10 Chickens per square meter. Obviously depending on their age. Since this is a working Husbandry raising chickens to sell for the egg laying market my main aim is to have as much free feed as possible.
By definition a free range chicken should have freedom for at least 3 hours per day. I am more concerned about free food and energy consumption. It seems the happy norm is 10 Chickens per square meter. Obviously depending on their age. Since this is a working Husbandry raising chickens to sell for the egg laying market my main aim is to have as much free feed as possible.
Size of a run
This run will be divided into two smaller runs. The main target market is selling pullets. (Point of lay hens). It means that from day old till 20 weeks they will consume 8kg of feed per bird. Chickens are brought in batches of 100, but traveling expenses to and from the hatchery has made it quite expensive and we found taking 500 birds at a time to be cost effective.
This will be unisex chicken so the run is setup in such away that pullets and cull can be separated at a certain age. Pullets needs to convert to commercial feed to ensure the buyers can house them according to their requirements. Culls will be raised on as much free food as possible.
So none of the runs will be larger than 40sqm. This will ensure that the hive mentality of the flock don't burn to much access energy. I expect that the average size per run to be no more than 300 birds, but on average about 200-250 adult birds. Well below the 10 birds per square meter. This surplus space will be used to fence of sections of the run to grow green feed every two weeks.
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