Can coyotes catch a small, flighty breed such as brown Leghorn?

enola said:

Hens from a GameXBrown Leghorn cross will get you a hen very much like a "game" hen, with a presentable rate of lay.

Click to expand...

centrarchid said:

Consider making a first generation cross (F1) between a game chicken and a breed that lays as you like. My American Dominique x American Games can produce >200 eggs in first year of lay which is comparable to pure American Dominiques.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a great idea for someone with a larger farm. Our landlady won't even let us have a rooster, so I'm not in the breeding game until we can afford to buy our own land. Even then, most hatcheries don't seem to sell any game breeds besides OEG. Would that suffice? I don't know what that breed's temperament is like.

UrbanEnthusiast said:

Fortunately, my birds will never have to be out in the open. Our property is mostly wooded. There is some clearing, but there are only a couple of spots that are more than 50 feet from some kind of brush, and I think the hens can avoid those spots and still find plenty to eat. Even my cat knows well enough to stay close to cover unless it's the middle of a sunny day.

So did your banties go broody and raise their own chicks? Did you ever get to eat their eggs, or were they just pets?

Click to expand...

Brush and weeds offer coyotes a good opportunity to spring an ambush on your chickens. Game hens, REAL game hens don't lay very many eggs. Think 30 to 50 eggs yearly for young game hens. Size up your flock accordingly, taking this into consideration.

UrbanEnthusiast said:

Sounds like a great idea for someone with a larger farm. Our landlady won't even let us have a rooster, so I'm not in the breeding game until we can afford to buy our own land. Even then, most hatcheries don't seem to sell any game breeds besides OEG. Would that suffice? I don't know what that breed's temperament is like.

Click to expand...

The OEG carried by the hatchery are not really OEG. Real OEG are in the hands of a very few breeders and would cost a pretty penny. Hatchery OEG are bred from American Gamefowl, with maybe a little added Leghorn to make them lay better. Crossing one of them with a leghorn and keeping the resulting females would meet your needs very well. Pure hatchery OEG would meet your needs only if you ordered enough and staggered the ages to ensure enough eggs when they go broody. Don't confuse OEG with OEG bantam. Different animal entirely, tiny, very tiny. Adds even more species of hawks to the list of potential predators.

chickengeorgeto said:

Brush and weeds offer coyotes a good opportunity to spring an ambush on your chickens. Game hens, REAL game hens don't lay very many eggs. Think 30 to 50 eggs yearly for young game hens. Size up your flock accordingly, taking this into consideration.

Click to expand...

I am on a tight budget, and we do this primarily for delicious eggs, so I just can't justify keeping a substantial number of hens that only lay 30-50 eggs a year. I'd love to have a small subflock of game birds someday to act as protectors, but I do need most of my birds to earn their keep in terms of laying. I think my ideal laying flock would be about 16 Hamburg hens, a Hamburg roo, a game roo, and a couple of game hens for breeding.

My game chickens keep me in eggs pretty good. Except in the summer when everyone is brooding, but I still get a few. I guess mine aren't real. As for pulling their own weight, they will find a lot of their own food, better than the heritage bred dual purpose chickens, so it's not like when you feed a bunch of huge fluffy heritage breeds a ton of feed to get the small pittance of eggs they actually lay, contrary to what all of the published literature states. I just let them raise chicks on their own schedule, so there are always a few from a different brood laying at one time or another.

That sounds awesome. I know game birds are light eaters, but it still comes down to coop space.

I bought 20 chickens on Easter weekend, one morning I found that over half of them were killed. I think it was probably a coyote. My brown leghorns and my ameraucanas were without a scratch.

If were not able to repel Coyotes of foxes, then a good half of my American Dominiques would be cleaned up before I would start to loose games. This assumes all adults. There can very much be a breed difference with those predators. Bobcats may catch only one at a time but ambush approach does not afford the games much advantage.