Re: Hi Thorn. I think I should answer here,

Yah beej like I said before if you want to free range birds for what ever reason you are gonna lose some or eventually all of them! Guinees are actually the best birds for free range because they are good flyers and their warning calls alert other birds ! Many who raise layer hens have guinees just for that purpose! Araconas are another ! The big prob with guinees is their replacement cost ,very expensive !
You have to decide what you want if you free range you have happy ferile birds with great diet and superb high quality eggs with great long chain fatty acid content high in omega threes etc. but you will lose a lot of them! If you fence them in you can still have very contented hens, but to replace the bugs and grasses of the fields is near impossible or extremely expensive, imagine keepping a dozen hens in flax seed
the cost is unbeleivable! So its a compromize! Even if they are fenced in and their wings clipped, you will lose birds, which is a diminishing practice for yardbirds as it actually inhibits thier ability to flee bad practice really !
Most bird raisers either reorder periodically or breed the birds themselves to restock!
Losing birds to preditors is all part of raising them! Unless you totally lock them up, then you have other problems just the same!
Animals are a big responsiblity as Im sure you know ,you just have to weigh the gains you get from it against the hassles! I think they are worth it!