cat

[ravenfeathers]

some cats would be fine; i guess it's a question of just knowing your cat and how predatory it is. i have one little 5 lb. female cat who think nothing of leaping on an 8 lb. hen. i wouldn't trust her with a big goose, honestly. i certainly wouldn't trust any cat on earth with a brood of chicks.

 

[brookwoodpat]

Even if *your* cats are fine with chickens, if you have a way for your cats to interact with your chickens, then that means other feral cats can probably get to your chickens too. Unless you are supervising all the time. Cats can jump seven foot fences and get through cat and chicken doors (as can raccoons) so it would be hard to let your cats come and go and share the same space as the chickens and not leave the door open so to speak to unwanted feral cats and other predators. Now, if you had fenced the chickens with hardware cloth, etc, all around in their own part of the shed, then theoretically you could do it, but your chickens might be uneasy to the point of not laying if they had strange predators eyeing them at night, even if they couldn't be reached.

I sympathize - I feed a couple of feral cats (TNR'd -- i.e. trapped, neutered and vaccinated and then returned) and the cats were here before the chickens -- unwanted but here. And I worry about those interactions. I don't house the cats -- well they have cat shelters in the front of the property, outside of the acre that is fenced for chickens and dogs. The cats are pretty wary of the GSD, who brooks no intruders, and generally don't come into the back because the dog goes after them if they do and it's a pretty chaotic confrontation (so far the cats have escaped but been pretty scared) but it is a dangerous combination to have feral cats around and chickens, one that I am sure, eventually, a chicken might pay for. But it is hard, in the country, where everyone has barns and barn cats (not me, at least not deliberately) not to have feral strays around. I TNR the ones I have because it's been proven that if you just kill them, another one moves in, so you might as well vaccinate them and neuter them so they can't breed and deal with the ones you have -- that is, unless they are chicken killers.