Any suggestions for keeping hawks out? Yesterday, I thought only one was attacking. I found the bird it had been eating and threw it over the back pasture fence. I figured, if it was still hungry it could eat that one instead of killing another one of my birds.
This morning, it did come back for the remains of yesterday's meal but it has a friend with it. Now I'm battling two very large hawks!
A couple of days ago, I found an injured bird; thought my horse had injured it. But now I"m thinking, the horse was grazing by the hen when she was attacked. When the horse bucked & kicked and started running around -which caught my attention - I ran out to see what was going on and all I found was the injured bird. The flesh of the bird had been ripped back in the exact location that yesterday's bird and been opened up and eaten. We killed the bird and took her away to dispose of. But now, I'm thinking it was the first hawk attack, followed by the successful kill of my Red Star yesterday.
Once, last year, I found one of my Cochins had been attacked. Thought it was a coon so I set the live animal trap with the dead bird inside for bait in case the critter came back. To my surprise, the next morning I found a hawk inside with its kill. I drove them out to a far away ranch and dumped the bird & its pray where no one with chickens lived.
Was about to repeat the process but discovered that;
A) there are two of them
B) they are far too big to fit in the live trap.
Any suggestions?
PS: I did find it interesting to see that they had come back for the original kill - as smelly and nasty as it was. Is the drought we are in causing them to act desperate or maybe they are feeding babies? Didn't even know they hunted in pairs.
This morning, it did come back for the remains of yesterday's meal but it has a friend with it. Now I'm battling two very large hawks!
A couple of days ago, I found an injured bird; thought my horse had injured it. But now I"m thinking, the horse was grazing by the hen when she was attacked. When the horse bucked & kicked and started running around -which caught my attention - I ran out to see what was going on and all I found was the injured bird. The flesh of the bird had been ripped back in the exact location that yesterday's bird and been opened up and eaten. We killed the bird and took her away to dispose of. But now, I'm thinking it was the first hawk attack, followed by the successful kill of my Red Star yesterday.
Once, last year, I found one of my Cochins had been attacked. Thought it was a coon so I set the live animal trap with the dead bird inside for bait in case the critter came back. To my surprise, the next morning I found a hawk inside with its kill. I drove them out to a far away ranch and dumped the bird & its pray where no one with chickens lived.
Was about to repeat the process but discovered that;
A) there are two of them
B) they are far too big to fit in the live trap.
Any suggestions?
PS: I did find it interesting to see that they had come back for the original kill - as smelly and nasty as it was. Is the drought we are in causing them to act desperate or maybe they are feeding babies? Didn't even know they hunted in pairs.
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