This week marked another first for the Rudd Rangers; they experienced freedom!

It was brief, it was supervised, but it was freedom! It was really hilarious to see them running and FLYING out of the tractor door! They were very excited! 

However, the possibility of losing one to a predator scares me to death, so I usually end up corralling them back inside after an hour or two. Since they have grown up in the chicken tractor, they do not stray to far from it. When the sun is gets to be too much, they quickly congregate back inside where it’s shady.

The Rudd Rangers love playing with one another more than any other breed of chicken I’ve ever owned. Maybe it should actually be considered “sparring,” but sometimes the mood strikes, and two will run up on each other and have a chicken stare-off. 

Each weighs an average of 3.5 pounds this week. So far, they have eaten about 150 pounds of chicken feed combined, including lots of grass and bugs! One important thing to note, is they will eat less feed if it is in pellet form. Maybe it is harder to eat, but when I give them pellets as opposed to crumble, they waste far less and actually eat less. Pellets definitely are the way to go once they are big enough to eat it. With the uncertain economic times, we have decided to keep one hen and one rooster from the flock of 13 to breed. It would be nice to see if they would be able to have offspring. Unfortunately, for the remaining 11, they will still be destined for the freezer.