Barn Cats

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smv0822

smv0822

In the Brooder
Jul 30, 2015
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Does anyone have barn cats? I'm looking to get two to cut down on my mouse infestation. Do your cats mess with your chickens at all??
 
I'm thinkin of getting couple kittens so they grow up knowing the chickens won't put up with them. How do you keep them from messing with them again? I've never had cats
 
We've had dozens of cats pass through our barn. Most of these weren't pets either, just strays. (My pet cats are too lazy to even get off the deck.) Never have had any problem with them. In fact, several of my bigger hens, and definitely my roosters, would probably outweigh some of those scrawny strays. They just never seemed interested in the chickens. I will say that cats do kill small birds all the time, so I would never trust them around chicks. I'm by no means saying that some cats won't try something ugly with your birds. They are very independent animals, and sometimes unpredictable. But it seems that they are more concerned with smaller prey and most don't seem to be up to the challenge of taking on a bigger bird. So like I said, I personally have yet to see a domestic cat kill an adult chicken, but there's always a first time for everything.
 
We have always had cats around when I've kept chickens - I have not lost a single bird (including chicks) to them. Cats may enjoy stalking them, but a swift peck from any bird they actually get close to is enough convince them to use them for stalking practice only. More often than not you see the chickens push the cats out of the food dish to get the cat kibble, chase the cats, etc. Just the other day they bullied one of our cats into giving up a mouse it had caught.
 
My chickens mob feral cats and chase them out of my garden. I have also never lost any chicks and they free range from 4 weeks old (with mum) so its seems its a safe bet that cats are not a real threat to chickens.
 
Oh but chicks are a completely different story, I would not leave any of the cats alone where they could get to the babies.
 
Ol Grey Mare said:
We have always had cats around when I've kept chickens - I have not lost a single bird (including chicks) to them.  Cats may enjoy stalking them, but a swift peck from any bird they actually get close to is enough convince them to use them for stalking practice only.  More often than not you see the chickens push the cats out of the food dish to get the cat kibble, chase the cats, etc.  Just the other day they bullied one of our cats into giving up a mouse it had caught. 
Click to expand...


That's how it goes here, too... Of course they look, but don't touch... Most times I'm yelling at a chicken to leave the poor cat alone ;)

That being said, I still wouldn't leave my cats to "babysit" the chicks without a full grown hen nearby to remind them that they're MY BIRDS, not theirs :D
 
Great thread :)

I raised two barn kittens last winter just for the purpose of dealing with the rat population explosion we had in this area.

I raised them in the brooder coop (unheated). They learned that they were bottom of the chicken pecking order quite early on.
As they grew they started to hunt rodents. The male kitten started to hunt eggs and the chickens were happy to go along with it as they like to eat broken eggs. He was re-homed and does a great job clearing rodents from his new barn and is still found in their nest boxes eating eggs.

The female took a long while to become a great huntress, and she was VERY interested in little fluffy chicks but ran away from my broody turkey hens with their young babies. I think she must have been flogged once by them ;-)
She has no interest in the chicks once they are feathered out and behave more like chickens or turkeys.
 

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