Chicken Warning Yells????

[inovermyhead]

I lost three chickens in two nights this week. I heard my dogs bark briefly, but that was it. I love the baby monitor idea!!! I can't believe I've never thought of that. I'll have to dig mine out of storage.

 

[speckledhen]

I also have had a baby monitor in the coop almost since my first bunch of girls went out there over a year ago. You just have to fiddle around with the volume to see what works best so you can hear if something important happens, but not have it so loud that you catapult out of bed if the rooster crows, LOL. I'd feel weird not being able to hear the girls at night now. The problem is that I have three coops and the monitor is only in the main one. I do hear crowing from the second coop and the chickens in the main coop would probably raise a ruckus if something happened in the Orpington coop. Great little tool, that is. Very sensitive, too. If anyone was trying to steal chickens in the night, no way they could get away with it, LOL.

 

[tiffanyh]

I dont know, I would be apt to shut them in at night. they are so much safer. I am sure they will be fine about "getting up" late after they get used to it. You may regret it later if you wait and see.....

BTW, some said, it is too late when you here the squaking---VERY TRUE!! Exactly what happen when I lost my chicken...

 

[rooster-red]

Go out to your coop late at night and do a little predator role playing.
I think you'll find that you can reach out and touch your chickens witout them even waking up.
I know this is the case with mine.
If you wait for squawking it will be too late.

The monitor is a very good idea, but you won't hear a snake if it gets in, so I would still want physical barriers to keep all predators out.

 

[ivan3]

Tifanyh wrote: "I dont know, I would be apt to shut them in at night. they are so much safer. "

Rooster-Red wrote: "Go out to your coop late at night and do a little predator role playing.
I think you'll find that you can reach out and touch your chickens witout them even waking up."

Very good points that should be kept in mind if trying to decide whether to spend the bucks on monitors/cameras/lights, or hardware cloth and coon-proof latches. Fork out the greenbacks for the latter.

In truth, the baby monitor is most useful as an offensive tool (think: Speckled Hen's noisy two legged varmints getting their stumbling butts served). Though useful as an immersive lab for learning Gallus Gab, e.g., you should hear the girls and roo growling and shifting around on their roosts when the raccoons are off in the woods screaming away as they mate), our monitor's primary function is to alert us to a predator that is either in one of the traps, or in need of more direct intervention. If your `Ft. Chook' is up to snuff the monitor allows one to make premptive inroads into the overall population of chicken eating varmints at your location without putting your chooks between rows of teeth; never having to wake up to discover that one's made an inadvertant assessment of the predator load...

A monitor in an insecure coop delivers nothing more than the sound track to an episode of Wild Kingdom that would have made Marlon Perkins puke as he narrated it.

 

[blossom hen]

Quote:
So True! Don't think that any of us who use them do so as defense. It's just a way to hear what goes on after we lock them in the house for the night.

 

[ruth]

WOW - so many great responses - I'm glad I asked the question. I think I'll start dropping the small chicken door at night so they are confined - I was waiting till they started laying eggs to totally lock them in but think now I probably shouldn't wait. The reason I asked the question in the first place is that I've read how so many of you had what you thought were predator-proof coops, with chicks all locked in, and suddenly found them dead and are trying to figure out what happened to them. Got me to thinking that even if I locked them in, obviously nothing is totally predator-proof, and as a last means of defense, would my dog or I hear anything if it got in and was killing them. I like the baby monitor idea, not as a defense because if their lives depended on me waking up and running out there to chase off something - they're GONERS. But I think it would help me sleep better knowing that if they were alerting me to a problem I would at least know what the problem was, where my "weak link" in my predator-proof system was, so that I could fix it. My three children are grown and gone and I never used a baby monitor with them but I always knew I was such a light sleeper, if I even sleep at all, that I would hear them at the first "whaa". Part of the question was that I didn't know if I was lying awake at night listening for something that no one has ever heard to begin with i.e. chickens yelling for their lives.

Keep up the great responses - they provide information that I've never found anywhere else and I'm sure others find it helpful and informative. Funny, I worried less at night about my real babies than I do about my chicks. Each night I'm imagining I hear something out there, each morning I go out and do a head count.

 

[Godiva]

When we had our dog attack it was our dog that woke us up (1:30am) and then we heard the hullabaloo. However by the time my husband got to the chicken tractor we had already lost 6 of our precious chickens. They were not crowing yet but one of them started that night - although it was more screaming than a regular crow. Horrible sound that will keep resounding in my head for a long time. We now have a monitor in our chicken tractor and it has been beefed up a lot since the dog ripped a hole through the chicken wire to get to them. I sleep much better now especially as now that we have our airconditioner going and windows closed I can't hear anything from outside. This way I know the noises that are normal and the moment I hear any new sounds I head out with a flashlight (or send DH out!) I am relatively new to chickens and it is kind of fun to get to know their happy contented sounds and the way they talk to each other or give warning etc. I LOVE our baby monitor!