At my wits end!!!!!!!!!!!!!/starlings

[scooter147]

Last night when I got home and went to lock up I had starlings all over my coop. I dispatched 65 starlings last night, 40+ the night before and during the course of Sunday over 100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would say so far this winter I have killed 500+ starlings and this might be conservative.
My coop is a disgusting mess, bird poop all over the freaking place and if that isn't bad enough I have to throw out half a feeder full of feed. I think these nasty creatures are preventing my chickens from eating as I never have this much leftover food. The worse part is there is not much I can do about the mess it's too cold to give the coop a good scrubbing.
I obviously have to take a shower after I'm done. I'm covered in poop and so are my chickens.
I am going to try the strips of cloth over the door and try to train the chickens to go in and out and hopefully this will help.
I have a one inch woven wire run with deer netting over the top, I don't really want to have to cover the run in chicken wire but I might have to if the cloth thing don't work.
I have been raising chickens for 40 years and have never had such a problem with these scourgfull, nasty, ugly, gross, disease caring flying ecoli.

 

[HobbyChickener]

Must be a bad year for them. I have thinned the herd too, but near as much as you. However they got tired of losing family I guess cause they have moved on.

 

[gsim]

Worse yet, the other shoe may drop when some or all of your flock becomes ill or mite infested. You are in a really bad situation. When possible, best to cover run completely with chicken wire, supported down the middle with pr treated 2x2's. Those things are airborne rats!

Many municipalities use a water/detergent mix to kill them. Washes the oil from their feathers and they die of hypothermia. If you could get a pressure washer and really hose them down good, the ones you soak will die within hours. In your place, I would confine them to the coop to keep them separated from those disease-carrying flying rats.

 

[MudPie]

Sometimes those plastic owls can deter birds from gathering. Buy a couple of those and postition stratigically in the area. Although, I don't know what that might do for your chickens mental well being.?

 

[Ibicella]

Out of curiosity, how did you kill them?

 

[scooter147]

Quote:
I tried the owl thing a few years ago, it took me awhile to figure out why my chickens wouldn't come out of the coop, duh!!! Starling = bird, chicken = bird.

As far as how I killed them, WELL, my tennis racket works really well. One swat, DEAD!!!

 

[ConchRepublic]

You can try a .22 with a shot round. Wont travel far and anything bigger than a rat wont have much issue with them.

ABout keeping them away... all I can say i make your coop and run completely enclosed so that they can't get in.

 

[cthrash1]

OMG!!! They were awful here for about a week... They were eating all my girls feed before the girls were let out in the morning. They perched everywhere. Ended having to take a stiff brush to the gate, fence and all. I ended up leaving the hatch on the coop open for a few nights and the starlings quit coming... I think my girls ran them off. Now I am back to locking up the girls at night, but the starlings haven't return and I'm glad.

 

[possumqueen]

Depending on how big your coop and run are, a tarp makes a great temporary cover until the airborne rats move on.

Back about 25 years ago I worked at a dairy where the starlings became a problem over the holding lot at the milk barn. My boss put up a couple of tarps and painted big eyes on top -- a pair of black spots with white circles around them to look like staring eyes. He put several pairs of the staring eyes all over the tarp, so they "stared" in all directions. The starlings left the next day, and within a week they stopped coming within 200 feet of those tarps.

Eye markings on top of the tarp wouldn't scare the chickens, just the starlings, and maybe hawks, too.

I gotta admit, though, it's certainly satisfying to slaughter the little buggers!

 

[chicks4kids]

We had the same problem here a couple years back. We would open up the t.v. room window and shoot 'em from inside of the house! We would go out, collect them at the end of the day, and put them in a bucket to be burned. Eventually, our male beagle learned the routine, and we could shoot 'em from inside, open the door, and off he would go to fetch the bird and bring it back so we could put it in the bucket outside of the door!! It is hilarious!

But yeah, they are awful. After a couple years and many many boxes of 22's, we are down to just a few stragglers. You'll get there, but WOW

that's alot of birds in such a little time!