Do Cats Eat Chickens?

[quigley257]

You know what they say..."Curiosity killed the cat". Any cats that I find being curious on my property immediately come down with a case of high speed lead poisoning. As soon as you let them out of the house, they become a predatory invasive species that are extremely hard on native wildlife of all types. I treat them as such.

 

[chickortreat]

Exactly the treatment I prescribe! Never fails!

 

[Sin City Chicks]

I free range my chickens as much as possible since I haven't been working and I can keep an eye on them. Unfortunately a black cat got in our yard a few days ago (while I was inside for only a couple minutes) and chased 2 of my girls over the wall, and they managed to cross the road and DH later found them in the neighbor's yard. My other girl was crouched by the back gate calling for her sisters. The cat was still in the yard when I came out, near the girl by the gate. I clapped and chased the darn thing out! Chickens were unharmed but shaken up, as was I. Feral cats are very common in my neighborhood, and the only predators we have to worry about, so we have been in the process of building a larger run. We want them to be safe from the cats but still have as much range space as possible. As much as I wanted to kick this cat (or give it a lead bath) the cat was only following its instincts. So we are taking the necessary steps to protect our girls and still give them plenty of space to roam.

 

[ellenmoshenberg]

The most dangerous feral animal in terms of causing diseases in humans, deaths in humans and other animals as
well as destroying the environment are other humans and some of them are right here on this list.

 

[jak2002003]

You know what they say..."Curiosity killed the cat". Any cats that I find being curious on my property immediately come down with a case of high speed lead poisoning. As soon as you let them out of the house, they become a predatory invasive species that are extremely hard on native wildlife of all types. I treat them as such.

Seems rather harsh.....in what country do you live?

Do you even shoot the cats that you know are peoples pets?

I keep my cat inside, and let him out into the garden when I am there to watch him. But there has been a couple of times when visitors came around and left a door open and he got out.

If my neighbour shot him just for walking into his garden I would consider that an over the top reaction and I would be very mad.

All my years keeping chickens I have never had a cat kill or injure one - and there are lots of cats in my area. I even keep small bantams.

 

[chickortreat]

The most dangerous feral animal in terms of causing diseases in humans, deaths in humans and other animals as
well as destroying the environment are other humans and some of them are right here on this list.

Now what possessed you to bring liberal politicians into the discussion?

 

[shmccarthy]

As I said, I have never had a problem with my cats and chickens.  I have six cats, three of them outside and known to hunt.  They have caught mice, birds, etc.  I have three inside.  One who is a fat lazy butt, and two that again, have caugt a couple of mice in my house.  I also have a small parrot in my house that gets outside of it's cage daily.  While curious, the cats have never attacked the bird.  He would bite their nose off if they did!  I raise my chicks in the house.  Now, they have a secure brooder, but one day I left the lid open and went in the room later to find my fat cat in the brooder with the chicks!  There she was, just sitting in the corner of the brooder watching the chicks.  The chicks were in the other corner, watching her!  LOL.  Every year my fat cat knows when I'm going to hatch chicks.  She's there when I turn on the incubators and sleeps beside the incubator, she's there when the chicks hatch and sleeps on top of the brooder.  She's just nosey and loves watching the little chickies.  The other two cats are actually scared of them.
My outside cats don't see little chicks unless a hen hatched them, even then, they are in a pen.  My larger chickens free range every day and my cats don't bother them one bit.  Run from them in fact.  Found a stray cat in a coop one day, poor thing was starving, but again, he just wanted out of the coop and couldn't find his way out.  He was hot and panting and very scared.  I helped him find his way out, but again, no damage done to the growing juveniles in that pen.  I've never seen a cat attack a crow, so I doubt they will go after a chicken.  Chickens are just to big for ordinary cats.  I'm not talking bantams here.  Now, if you have feral cats around your neighborhood, they may be hungry enough to try.  But a cat that is being fed, I highly doubt it's more than curiousity.

Cats kill for fun and will kill a chicken, for fun, if they want to. Heck, my Maine coon mix is bordering on the heavy side, gets fed twice a day and still brings back squirrels and rabbits almost daily. I watched her try and stalk a baby deer in the yard once. I was reading about this study conducted that house cats that are allowed outdoors (not feral cats) kill more animals than large breed cats (tigers, pumas, lions) not because they are hungry but because they aren't in a wild setting and kill for fun. It's instinctual for them. Feral cats hardly kill for fun in fact, they don't know when their next meal is, so they don't waste their time/energy on something they won't eat or something they might not be able to kill. Domestic house cats that have time outside know they're getting fed when they get home so most of their kills are just because of their natural prey drive and because its fun for them.

 

[MrsBachbach]

You know what they say..."Curiosity killed the cat". Any cats that I find being curious on my property immediately come down with a case of high speed lead poisoning. As soon as you let them out of the house, they become a predatory invasive species that are extremely hard on native wildlife of all types. I treat them as such.

Uh huh. Mice are in such short supply.
Don't forget the price Europe paid for treating the cat as a pest.

 

[bucket3]

Yes cats eat chickens but depending on the breed of chicken they will warn each other when they see it and stay together just listen for wild clucking and look for cats if you have a dog maybe let it out every now and then and that help keep them away also some chickens will attack the cats so just keep an eye out and chase away what cats you do see some cats couldn't careless about the chickens.

 

[bucket3]

Haha same at my house or they go up against the crazy ninja silkies

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