Bald Eagle

[Dwkuska]

Ok so I live in the Puget Sound area(Washington state) and we have Bald eagles in the area. As is I have concerns about my 2 1/2 chihuahuas out running in the back yard. We have 6 Gallus Gallus chicks atm and before I begin construction of a coupe/run I was wondering if any of you have any tips on combatting this predator. I have been thumbing around online and seen evidence to suggest that a full grown eagle is capable of shearing wire mesh, and is easily capable of flying off with a full grown chicken(seen em make off with huge salmon). Any thoughts? On a side note I would like to add that I am putting the run and what not into a line of trees so as to avoid the chance of fly-by glimpses by any hawks or eagles. I just want the best for my chicks and dont want any federal prison time for defending my chicks from the national bird.

 

[hdowden]

to help keep out predators here we also add a layer of regular hurricane fence then the chicken wire on the outside it seems to work for now and that's been over a year.....doesnt help with free ranging though

 

[LakeBird]

I think we lost one of our Cockerels to an Eagle today. He's nowhere to be found. We saw a bald eagle flying over the house this evening when we discovered him missing. Then noticed feathers all the yard too, but no major clumps of feathers. This will motivate us to finish the pen this weekend!

 

[MySuburbanLife]

I'm in a suburb just south of Seattle (hi, neighbor!) and we have a nesting pair of bald eagles in the giant trees situated between our house and our neighbors. They are beautiful and loud, and made me really think hard about predator control for my new flock. They do have very powerful beaks and could probably break through hardware cloth if they really wanted to, but they'd have to make a fairly large hole to get their body inside. For now, my 6 week-old chicks are safe in their fully hardware cloth-covered coop and run, but I have plans for making them a larger daytime run later this summer/fall. I'm still brainstorming ways of covering the top without spending hundreds of dollars on hardware cloth (dang, that stuff is pricy!) while still keeping them safe. Electric wire, maybe? Some sort of visual obstruction to their sight line? I'd love to see what other ideas people can come up with for you.

Good luck!

 

[LakeBird]

I'm in a suburb just south of Seattle (hi, neighbor!) and we have a nesting pair of bald eagles in the giant trees situated between our house and our neighbors. They are beautiful and loud, and made me really think hard about predator control for my new flock. They do have very powerful beaks and could probably break through hardware cloth if they really wanted to, but they'd have to make a fairly large hole to get their body inside. For now, my 6 week-old chicks are safe in their fully hardware cloth-covered coop and run, but I have plans for making them a larger daytime run later this summer/fall. I'm still brainstorming ways of covering the top without spending hundreds of dollars on hardware cloth (dang, that stuff is pricy!) while still keeping them safe. Electric wire, maybe? Some sort of visual obstruction to their sight line? I'd love to see what other ideas people can come up with for you.

Good luck!

Small world! I'm in Lakewood, south of Tacoma There is a nesting pair of bald eagles in our neighborhood, not sure which tree they live in though. I found this white feather this morning. We got a free chain link dog run that we are going to use for the pen until we can add on a covered run. The dog run has chain link across the top. Try craigslist, I am sure there have lots of inexpensive dog runs available there.