Feral cat colony

[petrel]

Four step plan:
1. purchase a large quantity of the cheapest cat food you can find and four automatic feeders. Set it up and allow the cats to gorge themselves constantly. Keep them fat and lazy.
2. Search this site for a recommendation on a very protective rooster. Find one and press him into service.
3. Build the fence Ivan recommended, but around the cats instead of around the chickens.
4. Be absolutely sure that the colony is not breeding or attracting new members.

Just for my own edification, why would you maintain, let alone bind yourself by contract to maintain, a colony of an invasive species?

 

[aart]

I was wondering when this day would come...
I bought my house only a few months ago and in our offer, we agreed to maintain the feral cat colony that has been here for the last 8 years. The cats are fed daily, twice a day, are spayed/neutered and generally keep to themselves.
I moved my chickens out to their coop sometime last week. They've been getting supervised outdoor time almost everyday. Our coop run is currently unfinished.
Today it is pouring down raining, and the chicks hadn't been out for a stroll in a couple days so I let them free range. As far as I knew, all the cats were hiding, because of the rain. So I went about doing a few dishes. When I went out to check on the birds, one was gone. A 6 week old silkie. (I know, I made the mistake, it was too young)
Is there anyone out there that has a cat colony that lives "peacefully" with their chickens?!?
Will a Roo be big enough to protect a flock from the cats.
I need some constructive advice, so please don't reply with shoot/trap/surrender...
I understand that keeping chickens and cats may prove to be impossible, but I need to see if others are even doing it out there, first.

That must be some house....or you really like cats. Very strange, but I'm not a cat lover.

 

[lilmizscareall]

I do like cats and yes, it is an amazing Victorian, in excellent shape, on a double city lot. If you have known what I've been through in the last year, you would understand the total desperation to get this home.
Other than that...
Shooting/trapping/etc is the easy answer. No ones ever tried any other options?

 

[YonahKluck]

I remember from somewhere in my fading memory that domestic cat is one of the few animals that hunt and kill for fun and sport, so I yahoo'd a couple of search phrases. I will let these couple of links speak for themselves. I spent a only couple of minutes doing this search I know there is more information out there.

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/cat-hunting.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110630075120AAkM4FV

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080421174655AA5gBYJ

As a thread I started https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/832502/how-to-get-hens-to-start-laying-again-after-being-attacked tells, the first predator trapped at my coop was a feral cat. My experience is that for each cat that I saw there are more unseen. Also as advised by my county animal control officer, "assume that any feral cat is a carrier of disease". Please do your entire community a big favor and take action.

 

[SunnySkies]

I grew up on a farm where we had many, many barn cats, some gentle, others feral. We also raised chickens in huge numbers. No issues between chickens and cats.

We made sure the cats had food so hunting was not necessary, although they did a great job at keeping mice and snakes away. Young birds were kept where cats could not reach them. We had several tough roosters who would and could thrash anything except for dogs (there was one horrible day where a neighbor's dogs killed like 300 birds). They reproduced constantly, but the mother cats taught the kittens to leave the chickens alone.

We opted to not keep birds like Silkies and other mild mannered breeds. They just were too slow and stupid to stay out of trouble. I'm having the same issue now, sigh, and thinking about getting rid of any birds that require me to look out for them.

And we did this for many, many years. It can be totally done.

 

[ivan3]

I do like cats and yes, it is an amazing Victorian, in excellent shape, on a double city lot. If you have known what I've been through in the last year, you would understand the total desperation to get this home.
Other than that...
Shooting/trapping/etc is the easy answer. No ones ever tried any other options?

Since the `colony' is `fixed' and aging (problem slowly resolving itself) and you aren't `in the boonies', you might consider hardware cloth enclosed `small run' area accessible from coop, and a larger run area using electrified poultry netting. Only way to be sure, when no one is home to monitor interactions, is to utilize fencing.

One potentially beneficial, indirect, value to chooks of having the cats is that if there are coyotes in your area (many are ``sub'urbanized), they might just grab up cats instead of trying to find a way into your coop.

If you had a lot of time to devote to exposing the kitties to some `associative learning', you could put a spray head on the hose and apply some `conditioner' to the fur of those individuals that are observed approaching the flock by slinking toward them on their bellies like Sylvester stalking Tweety.

 

[joan1708]

I have had 3 small silkies for close to 2 years. I also have a feral black cat since she was a kitten (She is now 3 yrs old). I dont' think the cat has ever bothered the chickens. I let the chickens out about 3 days a week into an open chicken yard on the side of the house. Nothing has injured them. So the cat has had plenty of opportunity to get to the chickens and has left them alone. There are also other cats in the neighborhood that I have seen in my backyard and they have not bothered my chickens. I do keep the cat well feed, so that probably helps.

 

[lilmizscareall]

I think this is going to end up looking like an arduous training exercise. This weekend, I'll be able to move the Roo out of quarantine...
We are still working on the coop, which should give me a kindly amount of time with a hose and the cats. I also have a beagle mix that loves(cares for) birds and has been active in deterring the cats, but she's 13 and gets easily distracted by the local squirrel population. Which means if there's anything else going on in the yard...she would never notice.
As for the size of the colony...just some interesting info... There were 15+ cats. The original home owners trapped them all with a local Feral Cat group. 15 remained and the more adventurous ones succumbed to traffic. The remaining 6 stuck strictly to the yard. I think that's why they're still here, that and the owners fed them everyday. Most colonies are fed once a week, a large amount of food, and left to continue hunting. Surprisingly the number one food for feral colonies is crickets. These guys are not a normal group, though. They don't hunt sh*t. So for them to kill and eat one of my birds, the first chance they got, really surprised me. Really, I made the mistake...I know I did... It's going to be a while before I ever let my birds free range without me there.
In all honesty, how many BYC'ers have lost chickens to predators the first time around? We all do I think, it's trial and error with coop/yard security.
Anyways, I will post my results for future queries!

 

[Folly's place]

Good luck with your six kitties; at least not fifteen!!! I had silkies and Belgian d'Uccles originally; the silkies were fragile and stupid (sorry!) and the d'Uccles were survivor types. After twenty+ years, I still have decendents of those original d'Uccles, a flock of big birds, and NO SILKIES. I did have a new barn cat who wanted chick dinner; she got a broody bantam hen one day, and moved to a nice indoor only home the immediately. My current barn cat, like most, would like tiny chicks, but ignores the older chicks and adults. Mary

 

[Gryphon]

Just a thought, are you SURE it was one of those cats that nabbed that silkie chick? I think you said you didn't see what happened, it could have just as easily been a crow or another animal to do a snatch and run.

In any case, good for you on keeping the colony going. When you have established spayed/neutered cats, they tend to keep roaming cats away from their territory, plus you aren't likely to have rodent and snake problems while they're around, even if they are lazy.