Any owl trouble...

[CTChickenMom]

Has anyone had any issues with owls? We have a rather LARGE

owl who frequents our yard. We live on the edge of 150 acres of farm land. There's a decent pond as a water supply about a 1/4 mile back from the house so we have lots of wildlife here. We have a yearly crop of red tail hawks too, I watch the fledglings sitting on the power lines out back behind our house calling to their folks. When the babies get older there will be no free ranging here. We have coyotes and coy-dogs too.

 

[swampwander]

We get screech, barn, barred and great horned. The girls are locked up at night, so not a problem. Better to have them around at night than to have an overabundance of rats and mice!!

 

[plreef]

Luckily we haven't had any problems yet. I hear a Great Horned near the house every now and then. One of our neighbors lost all his chickens to Red Tailed Hawks though.

 

[colby318]

Last week I had an owl walk through the chicken door and help himself to a pullet. I busted him redhanded when I came home from work at 2:30am and found the heat bulbs out. He was a big guy, too.

We're now going to have to net the top of the run.

Colby in KY

 

[Chicken Cluck]

Yeah, owls and they're sneaky little things.....

 

[moduckman]

Haven't had any problems with hawks, yet (knock on wood). The great horned owl has been a royal pain in the backside for the past several years. On year I lost 14 call ducks, 15 poults and over 20 chickens to them. Owls will become especially in late Feb. and March when they hatch their brood and need food for them. The other owls are not really a threat to adult chickens.

 

[CTChickenMom]

I wasn't overly worried about owls considering they are half the weight of an adult chicken but I didn't think that it takes them a while to get to full size.

 

[Chickie Mamma]

Wow, I didn't even know owls were that big a problem. We have some here too, but never paid much attention to them. I worry more about the foxes (took 8 birds last March) Coyote and Hawks. My girls are covered now anyway, but I do let them out in an uncovered pen during the day. How do you keep owls away. I have a live wire running along the base of the pen and coop for the ground predators, but what about flying predators?

 

[sandypaws]

some of my chickens are locked up in coops some of my chickens are in a large fenced pasture (i think what you guys call it?) they are not secure over the top,, some roost in plain site...

i never had owl or hawk problem.... in 20+ years i have only lost 2 ducklings to a hawk and i saw it happen... it swooped down and scooped them up,, really a beautiful thing to see...

 

[CTChickenMom]

I don't think you have to worry about owls during the day...they are nocturnal. Late afternoon you'd have to think about getting them undercover or covering their run/pasturewith hardware cloth. The sad thing is, most of the owls and hawks can't carry away the larger breeds but they will make a mess of it in the short time it takes you to cross your yard.