Love your run area! Are those lights at the top of the posts? I've thought about adding some to mine as well.The problem with the hawks is that once they kill and eat that first chicken, there's no stopping them. The first few years we had chickens on this farm, the hawks never touched a chicken. We didn't think they would! We just figured Red Tails don't eat chickens. The hens are too big. Well, I think they had to get desperate enough to grab one, and then all bets were off. From then on, they hunted the chickens until they killed most of them. And they would bring their babies here to hunt and kill chickens. So the next generation learned how to do it, and so on. Horrible problem.
Here's a few photos of what we built. You can see their house in the 2nd picture. It is part of the big barn, and it's a separate room, I think 12x12x8.
In the 1st and 3rd photos you can see that big forest of trees off in the background - that's where the 2 breeding pair of Red Tails live with their babies. They raise about 2 young ones every spring.
So yeah, we built a McMansion for my birdies so they could live comfortably and happily without being croweded, hot, or miserable. I knew most of their time would be in the run. They have heating and air conditioning in their house, they have fans. They have food and water in the house, and in the run. They have flock blocks, and I put out various fruits and vegetables every morning. I also pick a large armload of grass for them every morning and throw in the run. Their regular feed is a mix of cracked corn, black oil seed, and layer crumble so they get a mix. I also buy bags of some kind of chicken treat at Tractor Supply that looks like little yellow balls of cat food. It says something about bringing the free range inside the coop. Can't remember the name brand. It's made up of different forages and vegetables into a kibble format and they love that stuff.
Every night when I let them out, we sit on the law together and they eat mealworms. I stay out there with them while they run all over the yard and dig and scratch but they only get maybe 2 hours at most in the evenings and that's it. I usually lay under a tree and read on my iPhone while they do their thing. I usually have snacks and a glass of tea for myself, and they always run back to me and beg for food, take a drink of my tea, and then run off again.At this point they actually seem lost and afraid when I'm not out there. They seem to always want to run back to me and "check in" instead of just running off to do their own thing. But I hand raised them and they have been extremely spoiled and handled extensively every day so that's pretty much all they know.
If you get more mature birds that are more independent and used to being free ranged and then try to lock them in a run 24/7, they would probably be more stir crazy.
