- Apr 23, 2009
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Yesterday afternoon I was on my way home, when my husband called and told me, "Bad news! There's a hawk in the pen and it killed one of the chicks! Where are you?" I was only about a minute from the house, so they waited for me before doing anything else. When I got there, I ran to the coop, to find my 9-yr-old in the pen with a rake over the hawk. I had 5 6-wk-old pullets in there, and the boys had gotten out the 4 that were still living. We decided to just open the door and let the hawk make his way out of the run, but the dumb thing kept flapping around and banging into just about every part of the fence except where the door is, which is apparently what it was doing until I got there before they covered it with the rake again to keep it from hurting itself. I had to uncover part of the run, over where the hawk was just hanging, upside down, from the chain-link wall of the run. Even then, it just hung there. My son had to gently lift it from underneath with the rake so that it was upright, and it managed to fly away. We were afraid it was going to stress itself out so much that it would just die, but it seemed ok when it got out.
My run is covered with bird netting, and under a large tree. I have never had anything get in there (but I also secure my birds in the coop at night). My only guess is that the hawk managed to get in the top, between the edges of the pieces of netting. One of the pieces was sagging a little because of twigs and leaves on top of it, creating a small gap between it and the adjacent piece. The gap wouldn't be visible from above, though.
The pullet that was killed was a sweet little speckled sussex, one of 2 I ordered myself for my birthday, along with 4 other chickies. I'm bummed out. I do wish I had my phone in my pocket when I went to the coop. Since my other girls were safe, I would have liked some close-up pictures of that hawk.
After 2 1/2 years without incident, we've had terrible luck with our chicks and chickens this summer. Hopefully this will be the last bad news.
My run is covered with bird netting, and under a large tree. I have never had anything get in there (but I also secure my birds in the coop at night). My only guess is that the hawk managed to get in the top, between the edges of the pieces of netting. One of the pieces was sagging a little because of twigs and leaves on top of it, creating a small gap between it and the adjacent piece. The gap wouldn't be visible from above, though.
The pullet that was killed was a sweet little speckled sussex, one of 2 I ordered myself for my birthday, along with 4 other chickies. I'm bummed out. I do wish I had my phone in my pocket when I went to the coop. Since my other girls were safe, I would have liked some close-up pictures of that hawk.
After 2 1/2 years without incident, we've had terrible luck with our chicks and chickens this summer. Hopefully this will be the last bad news.
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