Reply #24: Our chickens usually had to have their beaks clipped

[NickB79]

And they had a 200 sq. foot mini-pasture enclosure attached to their chicken coop. We normally raised 50 chickens each summer, butchering most in the fall except for a few saved for egg-laying over winter. The previous poster is right: chickens do act inhumanely towards one another short of being left free-range. We didn't have to clip the beaks of our free-range banty chickens, but they were skilled, mean mothers when it came to living on their own. The more domesticated breeds like Leghorns would have been torn apart by cats, foxes, coyotes and weasels if they weren't fenced in.