Hawk Problems...what covers your run?

[cheeps]

We have a hawk attacking our chickens. DH is on vacation, so he just happened to witness the hawk swoop down, grab my OEGB roo George and take off with him, but thankfully he dropped him. Also, there were white leghorn feathers on the ground in the run, although my girls were accounted for. At the beginning of Dec, we were on vacation for the weekend with a friend house sitting, my Peaches vanished only leaving behind a few feathers. So, I think there's been an ongoing assault that we've been completely unaware of! I feel so bad! We have to do something....

We need to cover our run, first and foremost. What should we cover it with? Our run is 8 feet tall and 15'x15'. DH doesn't want something that will sag down. Any suggestions?

Edited to Ask: Could the fear of the hawk be causing them to stop laying? We haven't had an egg since September. My poor babies!

 

[chseeads]

I have 2x4 welded wire on top of mine...same thing the sides of mine are made with.

 

[texasgal]

I have chicken wire on my top .. because we've seen a few hawks .. unfortunately, I don't think it will go very far toward stopping other predators .. FORTUNATELY, we haven't seen coons, coyotes, cats .. yet. It's a race with time......

 

[Pumpkinpup]

I have shade cloth over the top of my runs and it serves dual purpose

protects from sun and preds both!

 

[vtchickenlady]

We have chicken wire on the roof of our pen and keep it from saggin by propping it up with long tree limbs.

 

[Bravo]

We have standard chicken wire on the top of our run but we pulled it very taught before securing it to the wood. No sagging at all but my run is a lot smaller than yours.

On a Dirty Jobs episode they were tracking the nests of endangered waterbirds--the nesting areas were fenced pontoon boats and over the top it had a matrix of rope creating a series of squares over it. The wildlife expert said the roping allows the protected birds to get in and nest but the size of the rope squares were too small to accommodate the wingspan of the Great Horned Owl so they didnt try to land and or hunt the chicks. I wonder if something like this could be used against hawks. Just a thought.

So I am curious--I am super new to this so I apologize if this question is silly. Is chicken wire not effective against raccoons or hawks? We are in a big city however there is a fair amount of raccoon/skunk/possum/hawk activity. Since its winter we have been securing the popdoor (attached to the enclosed run) at night to keep the warmth in but in the summer I was thinking to leave it open.

Thanks for the help! This city girl could use all the help I can get!

 

[Wifezilla]

We used deer netting. We needed something really fast after a hawk found our yard and decapitated 2 of my ducks. So far so good.

 

[DouglasPeeps]

We had a problem with hawks this fall. I lost a couple of my hens to the hawk. We were devastated! We also had a window broken in our coop. I am pretty sure that our chickens were frantic and smashed into, which is what caused it to break. I did ALOT of research because due to the size and shape of our run we were not able to cover it. So, I hung CD's with fishing wire around my coop. I also strung the fishing wire across and hung 1-2 in the center. It worked like a charm!!! The first couple of days after putting them up we kept a really close eye out for the hawk. We saw him 2 times, but he didn't even come close to our run. He hasn't been back. They don't like the reflection from the cd's and the fact that they are hanging. This was a very cheap alternative that worked great.

How old are your chickens? You said that they have stopped laying. I didn't notice that mine even slowed down their egg production during this time. Could they be molting? Not laying as much due to shortened days?

 

[Mahonri]

I have plastic netting.

I have not doubt it's saved some of my birds.

With feral chickens in the neighborhood to the south, we have hawks that live and breed in the neighborhood.

 

[incubatingisfun]

chicken wire and boards had hawk problem one time saw a hawk dive by my coop ran outside to my coop bare footed just in time to catch the the hawkand scare him away