Follow Survivorlady, my tough as nails Cracker game hen, from chick to momma hen as she survives the harsh Florida environment and becomes the best free range survivor chicken in the world! My Florida Cracker Gamefowl: www.ebay.com/i....
Dang bullfrog, I been hoping to see some more of your videos. Hope all is well with you. I have truly enjoyed your Ocala forest videos. Watched them several times through and still have more to learn from them.
Thank you! My camping and my airgun videos are lacking as of late. I had started camping in January but my videos didn't turn out (filming on my phone and my phone bricked). I have a nice phone now with a good camera but haven't been out since. I'm thinking of ways to do both camping and airgun videos, but I won't promise anything until I've done it. I have a campfire story video I've done but not sure if I'm going to post. I'm sitting at the computer today while I have some quiet around the house and thinking about editing it.
I love your setup and method of natural selection. If I have a property like this, I'd do exactly the same. It's interesting. With my experience, I took note that chickens were very hardy against the elements. Even traditional breeds do well too. I had a leghorn, cochin bantam mixed with something, three Belgium d'uccle, and the rest were Easter Eggers mixed with American game. One night I forgot to close the door. Something got in but didn't get any of them, but since that night, they decided to roost on trees. In the winter, temperature could go below freezing and very windy, or it could rain with temperature in the low 30's. They survived all that. None got sick, for years. But predator hardiness is a different thing. I lost them to hawk, feral cats, and dogs. I was living in the city.
@thomasjcorson7502 Houston TX. Temperature here rarely dipped below freezing, but it could for a week or two. It also depends on the breeds. The big ones with lots of feathers like brahma, cochin, Orpington, Australorp, etc.. would surely do well in the cold.
The way of the future is farmers are going to have all kind of AI robots to take care of all the predator problems. An intelligent drone can surely handle the hawks.
Amazing Video bullfrog. It really is amazing to see the survival of the fittest in it's pure form! I watched some of your previous jungle fowl hybrid videos, and In one of them you mention making them a little bit bigger. Well I was think You could cross your red jungle fowl hybrid and a partridge welsummer. I think that cross would give your survival chicken size, and they look exactly then same, so they would have the same color just twice the size.
I'm about to cross them to the Blueface strain of American gamefowl off of a Florida game farm where they were raised free range. I think my Crackers are already closely related to the Blueface strain and I think this crossing will be excellent. I think the resulting birds will retain their Cracker traits but in a larger body. I about to post a video (probably tomorrow) showing off the Blueface I'm growing for the crossing.
the best videos on the internet of these birds and very educational too .., I hope that this year you will be born many chickens of this beautiful species.
Have you considered getting a dog that is aggressive toward aerial predators? I have a Kangal and two Alabai that watch the skies hard. There is famous footage of a kangal trying to attack a drone in Turkey, because they have to worry about golden eagles eating kids and lambs.
I've been thinking about your recommendation of the Kangal lately. I have a pack of coyotes around that I cannot trap and I'd like a proactive dog around that might go looking for them. My dogs do a good job of protecting the homestead but they're content just to run a predator off from the immediate farmyard and show no interest in guarding against hawks.
She lost all of the chicks from that first hatch. She then had a second hatch where 2 of 5 have survived, a little stag and a pullet. The father of the second hatch was General Lee, my show-American game bantam. I don't know who fathered the first batch.
I'm sort of doing that. I turned loose 11 hatchery laying chicks. Of those, I have 6 left and they're about 5 months old now. Hatchery Rhode Island Red, Austrolorp, Easter Egger, and Barred Rock. All the Barred Rocks were killed by predators. I lost no Austrolorps, and 1 each of the other breeds.
I sell hatching eggs in the spring and fall, although the hot weather has ran late this year and my brood cock is still in molt. So no hatching eggs yet this fall. I may have some in November.
The only predator deterrent I have are my two free range dogs. I have a bulldog and a hound. The bulldog generally stays right around the house in guard mode more for us humans inside than for the chickens. But the hound likes to run varmints all over the property at night. Predators still make attempts on the chickens but they do it very warily and try to sneak around the dogs. When coyotes make raids, they do it when the wind allows them to approach the house without the dogs smelling them. Also, the chickens do actually have night vision and will fly off if a predator approaches them. I think the reason predators don't catch them at night is simply because the predators can't. As far as why owls don't take the birds that roost in the open, truth is I have no definite idea although I have some speculation. We have lots of owls here; barred, great-horned, and screech are the three species I've seen. One moon-lit night I even saw a great horned owl high up a pine tree in perfect swooping position to hit the chickens sleeping below on a coop roof. Yet it never happened. One old-time game chicken keeper told me a couple of years ago that in his opinion, owls fear free range dogs and won't often take chickens at night because the owls know they have to take the chicken to the ground where the owls are vulnerable to dog attack.
@@Florida_Bullfrog thanks for the explanation. I love the idea of what you are doing. What makes you think the chickens are doing a good job staying alive themselves vs the dogs are doing all the deterrent work? I’m not sure this would be nearly as successful without the dogs. My neighbor has normal chickens on 5 acres with one Great Pyrenees and she said she doesn’t really lose any chickens. She said they normally go in their coops at night but I don’t believe she locks them up. And I know she said some roost on the fence. I’ll double check. I’ve been wanting to breed small LGDs for smaller homesteads for a couple years now. All LGDs in this country are very large dogs necessary for keeping a pack of coyotes, wolves or even bears at bay. Most homesteaders could probably get by with a 25-40lb dog where raccoons are the typical predators and maybe a few coyotes. Many foreign countries seem to have smaller dogs that perform this task.
@@jhost0311 As it relates to night-time mammal predators, I cannot say. During the day, my dogs pay no mind to hawks whatsoever and hawks (and sometimes eagles) make daily runs on my chickens. The only thing that stops the hawks from being successful are the chickens themselves. It would be hawks moreso than any nighttime predator I'd be most concerned about wiping my flock out.
@@Florida_Bullfrog cool. Yeah a proper LGD will keep hawks at bay too. Unfortunately all LGDs in this country are too big and roam too much for my farm homestead situation.
My game bantams survive better. They are truly flighted. Faster, more agile, more reproductive, and like I said they can fly like quail. May incorporate that for the listed benefits
