Recent content by Steve J

Get rid of their food. After a dairy farm closed up the road from me I had a few rats try to move in outside. I trapped a couple in leg hold traps and a few young in live traps. The older ones are too smart to get caught. I finally got rid of them by making sure there was no dog food left...

Roosters can be pretty good fighters. If a hawk lands on one when the rooster is unaware the hawk has a huge advantage. But, it seems if the rooster is ready for the attack the bird of prey can be defeated by the sheer speed a rooster uses his spurs with. This rooster is tied and still manages...

My red jungle fowl rooster is a great protector. I had hawks try to come after my hens before I got him, but now he gets them inside everytime a hawk comes near, then he raises heck while standing in the doorway. I know he will fight anything that comes after his girls, because I've seen him go...

Mine (red sex links) fly up to the top of the coop, then over the fence into the dog area with my 4 dogs! I come home and a hen will be walking around with my dogs. Freaked me out the first time it happened, but they won't bother them for some reason. I never trained the dogs just fenced the...

Yes, a grey fox can climb a tree but it sure could have been something else.

My new hens are red sex links and they get along great. Hardly notice any pecking order at all. The ones I had before were mixed and a barred rock was a terrible bully. She would lay into a buff's head with everything she had every time the rooster mounted her. Now the bully hen is all I have...

Jesse Stuart, a Ky. writer of mainly short stories about back woods life, had a story about a rooster that was prized for his dominance. The rooster wound up killed by a tiny screech owl at night . The owl killed him by attacking his neck. "Nest Egg," the tale of a Don Giovanni of the...

I kicked a barred rock hen out of my flock for being a mating bully. Oh, she's an all around bully anyway, but at least then the other hens can flee. She attacks them when the rooster mates and goes after their heads as hard as she can. I've had her loose all summer and gave her chance after...

I added the one in my avatar, after my hens were grown because a small hawk was after them. Just put him in and a couple of hens ran up to him and did the stare thing, he half heartedly jumped up and just barely let them feel his spurs. They both ran away. That was it, nothing else happened and...

I heard a bunch of robins in a tree outside work one day, looked and a crow was busy taking the last of the baby robins out of a nest. So, they not only will steal eggs of other birds, but the babies as well.

Mine came from a feed store as babies, got them mixed as to breed. They never got along and always fought a lot. Now I have some red sex links I ordered as 18 week old and they don't even seem to have a pecking order. One extreme to the other!

Even the barking from dogs , especially ones like coonhound is enough to keep predators away. A big black and tan hound came to my house a few years ago and he's got a thunderous bay. Great nose too, nothing gets by him.

You need a good scent hound. My dogs would be on him so fast.

I'm sure my 5 dogs would have killed my chickens if they weren't accustomed to them , by having the chickens right next to them, with fencing between them. As it is they never tried to get in the chicken pen. And when I came home to find one had got in with the dogs, she was walking around with...