On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 12:35, Engelhart/Paul Family wrote:

>Free range chickens are good  but pastured are better.
...
> Ken

Hens naturally live in very small groups of a single male and 3-4
females.  Of course they can get along with more, and they need to when
there are young ones around, but around 10 seem to be the limit and they
experience stress.

One of the problems of free range is that thousands of birds living
together is unnatural in the extreme and the birds are actually happier -
even over the longer term - in pens of up to 10 than free-ranging with a
few thousand other nut cases.

For more on factory farming, with contributions from scientists and
campaigners (and insights of Paleo relevance), dip into this transcript of
a 50-minute radio broadcast last week:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1086515.htm

This is where I learnt that the natural family size for chooks is around,
not 10-15 which I had previously thought.


Keith.