Hawks! How can I keep the hawks away from my chickens?

[Sylvester017]

Thank you for tip number 5. Always lots of hawks here - busy day for them here today, in fact. My chickens have good cover and I run surveyor tape over their paddocks, which moves around a lot in the wind - though it's not perfect, I have yet to see a hawk that is willing to try to get through it. I bought some aviary netting but have yet to hang it up (but I plan to).

I like the idea of the flags - there are two flight paths that I can put them in that may deter them.

- Ant Farm

My DD & SIL have a very tall lighted flying flagpole - they still have aerial predator visits - they decided not to keep chickens or even a pet cat for the pets' own safety. One large aggressive dog is what they keep as a predator deterrent - she tore up an invading possum night visitor. I'm just glad I don't have that much of an overwhelming predator problem with my city chickens - but I still worry and keep thinking of new safety ideas to try since clever city raccoons and freeway rats occasionally enter the neighborhood.

 

[Sylvester017]

Deleted post

I think your idea of cutting down the flight path area of your chicken yard is an excellent idea. It's what we did to our open yard - we used a pop-up canopy to interfere with the flight path of raptors who like to swoop down on running prey/chickens. Of course we also have a lot of other shelters around the yard for the hens to hide.

 

[critterkeeper25]

People on the BYC thread "post your chicken coop pictures here" say that 1/2-inch hardwire keeps out small rodents and snakes out of a run but I free range my hens and the coop pop door is open all day and if someone's pet boa or python escapes in the neighborhood my coop would be vulnerable like yours is.  I guess all we can do is to check the coop well every day.  We open ours up everyday to clean up the nestboxes and collect eggs anyway.  Keep us updated on the scarecrow and if the predator-eyes balloons work or not.  Seems like a silly solution but if it works I'll use it to scare the darned wild sparrows and doves!  I'm tired of the buggers using my vegetable plants to hide and poop in!  We got tired of finding their poops in the chicken water so we invested in a couple Brite Tap nipple valve waterers and the wildlife can't dirty the water any more! 

How nice that you have Doms.  Ours died before POL so we never got to know how she'd fit in our backyard flock but we absolutely loved her active outgoing friendly curious personality.  We have a gentle-breeds flock now and aren't sure how a Dom would fit in.  They are a sweet human-friendly bird but never got to find out how a Dom would behave with Silkies and Ameraucanas (not EE) and we're adding a Breda pullet next week.  We were sent a Breda cockerel on accident and loved him so much.  We had to re-home him with friends but he was so much like a Dominique in outgoing unafraid friendliness that we decided to go with a Breda pullet.    A Dom owner thought the Doms might not be good to mix with Silkies in the flock so I'm still wondering.  I'm also considering an Orloff and Pavlovskaja but have no experience with either and have been asking a lot of questions about them.  They seem like timid birds and I need predator-savvy breeds because of the free-ranging backyard.  I know Favies are gentle birds but the feedback is that they are not very predator-savvy or alert.

What are your breeds?

We have RIRS that we picked up at our local TSC to be companions to a lone survivor chick from a group of 15 that we mail ordered, Buff Orpingtons, Buckeyes,and Dominiques. We started out with 19 hens, we lost one at a year to the neighbors (they deny it, but we have seen it in their yard with their 2 chickens) we lost 3 to a fox last fall, 1 BO, 1 RIRS and 1 Buckeye. We dispatched the fox.
The Dominiques are serious forragers. They love treats and won't hesitate to angrily peck at your ankles if you don't produce said treat. We have witnessed one attacking one of our RIRS when she got her saddle caught in the briars. She ran over and proceeded to rip out the feathers on her neck and ate them. We now have three hens that have huge bare areas on their backs. I'm thinking that it's the Doninique. I'm ordering some pinless peepers to put on her to see if the picking stops.
As far as the scarecrow goes, we didn't have any hawk issues after I put it in the yard.
And, I caught a total of 6 black snakes last summer in our coop. We sealed up the soffit with carpenter's cloth wire. I guess that we shall see if it helps that they no longer have a place to hide and digest.

 

[Sylvester017]

We have RIRS that we picked up at our local TSC to be companions to a lone survivor chick from a group of 15 that we mail ordered, Buff Orpingtons, Buckeyes,and Dominiques. We started out with 19 hens, we lost one at a year to the neighbors (they deny it, but we have seen it in their yard with their 2 chickens) we lost 3 to a fox last fall, 1 BO, 1 RIRS and 1 Buckeye. We dispatched the fox.
The Dominiques are serious forragers. They love treats and won't hesitate to angrily peck at your ankles if you don't produce said treat. We have witnessed one attacking one of our RIRS when she got her saddle caught in the briars. She ran over and proceeded to rip out the feathers on her neck and ate them. We now have three hens that have huge bare areas on their backs. I'm thinking that it's the Doninique. I'm ordering some pinless peepers to put on her to see if the picking stops.
As far as the scarecrow goes, we didn't have any hawk issues after I put it in the yard.
And, I caught a total of 6 black snakes last summer in our coop. We sealed up the soffit with carpenter's cloth wire. I guess that we shall see if it helps that they no longer have a place to hide and digest.

Thx for the reply re the scarecrow & wire! Sorry about the loss of your hens but happy to hear about the fox! It's sad we have to battle wildlife to keep our domesticated livestock safe. I understand the adult Doms are serious foragers - you can see it already in the busy movements of the little Dom chicks when they scratch and peck. Let us know how the Peepers work - I've read both successful and failed reviews on using them. We chose to re-home our feather-picking Marans once we realized what she was doing to our Silkie - she also started chewing on the new Silkie we added. Once a chicken starts feather-picking it's almost impossible to rehabilitate the culprit.

This is the feather-picking culprit - a huge lazy Cuckoo Marans that we re-homed to an egg seller.


This is what the Marans did to our Silkie before I realized it was not molting but being eaten alive!

 

[realsis]

I sure wish I knew how to stop hawks .problem is i must live smack dab in their flight path. I have 10,00sq feet I'd absolutely love to let my girls enjoy but I not only have chicken hawks I have those HUGE hawks. (don't know the name) and they are NOT afraid of people. I have tiny silkies now but in April I'm getting 7 Barred Rocks, 1 Silver penciled rock, one suprise standard layer and 1 Golden Cuckoo Maran. Those are who I DESPERATELY want to free range and keep my tiny silkies in the run but not a day goes by one doesn't fly over my house. oh yes they see me and know I have chickens. my silkie almost got it with me standing right next to her. Thank God my hubby yelled look out! Those nasty hawks will SIT on my fence and patiently wait!! ugh. what can I do if anything? PLEASE HELP ME! ANY ideas? They aren't scared of anything!! those suckers. I live close to river and I think they nest there. it's not like it's just one. I have seen three at a time above my yard..

 

[critterkeeper25]

I know that Osprey live near water, but I'm not sure that they would eat chickens. They are known fish eaters. Is it possible for you to set up some shelters spaced close enough that your hens could duck under cover if needed? Maybe some old plywood over cinder blocks or firewood logs? Wheelbarrows tipped over, propped up slightly? Maybe try the predator eye balloons. We haven't tried ours yet, but I would imagine having them suspended and bobbing in the wind might be a deterrent. Cover is the key. As long as they have another escape route in case a hawk tries to get them on the ground. I've had them come at my hens sideways when they were hiding under tall ornamental grasses. My hens just scooted out from under on the other side to get away.

 

[jak2002003]

If you can encourage crows or ravens to nest on your property they are really good at keeping hawks away... they will mob them, dive bomb them and harass them till they move on.

 

[critterkeeper25]

[COLOR=0000CD]Thx for the reply re the scarecrow & wire! Sorry about the loss of your hens but happy to hear about the fox! It's sad we have to battle wildlife to keep our domesticated livestock safe. I understand the adult Doms are serious foragers - you can see it already in the busy movements of the little Dom chicks when they scratch and peck. Let us know how the Peepers work - I've read both successful and failed reviews on using them. We chose to re-home our feather-picking Marans once we realized what she was doing to our Silkie - she also started chewing on the new Silkie we added. Once a chicken starts feather-picking it's almost impossible to rehabilitate the culprit.[/COLOR] [COLOR=0000CD]This is the feather-picking culprit - a huge lazy Cuckoo Marans that we re-homed to an egg seller.[/COLOR] [COLOR=0000CD]This is what the Marans did to our Silkie before I realized it was not molting but being eaten alive![/COLOR]

Poor thing! I know, it's extremely frustrating. I've tried everything but the pinless peepers. I've tried pick-no-more, vicks, blue kote, vaseline, the saddles,bitter apple spray. Nothing seems to work. I'm not 100% sure that it's the Dominique, or at least that specific one. But..I have to start somewhere. I'm afraid that one morning I'm going to go out and find a hen with a hole in it. I have about 6 hens that have some sort of Feather damage/loss, 3 with bald spots. It's getting worse. I think the culprit moves to someone else when their favorite target(s) have something on them. Wish I could catch them in action, but I think it's happening before I let them out in the a.m.

 

[Cebarmlds]

http://shop.niteguard.com/products/nite-guard-repellent-tape

this hawk repellant tape really helps.


we keep the crows around by putting stale bread out for them in the morning( before the chickens are out)

 

[Sylvester017]

Poor thing! I know, it's extremely frustrating. I've tried everything but the pinless peepers. I've tried pick-no-more, vicks, blue kote, vaseline, the saddles,bitter apple spray. Nothing seems to work. I'm not 100% sure that it's the Dominique, or at least that specific one. But..I have to start somewhere. I'm afraid that one morning I'm going to go out and find a hen with a hole in it. I have about 6 hens that have some sort of Feather damage/loss, 3 with bald spots. It's getting worse. I think the culprit moves to someone else when their favorite target(s) have something on them. Wish I could catch them in action, but I think it's happening before I let them out in the a.m.

If you think the feather-picker is one of the Doms, isolate one Dom at a time from the flock/coop for about a week and see if damage is still being done to the flock. If more damage is still being done then return her to the flock and isolate a different suspected culprit for a week or however long it takes to discover if there's still damage done to the flock. It is important to identify and isolate a feather-picker and possibly re-home (or process) her because the rest of the flock will start to pick up her nasty habit. I've heard it before where people have tried all sorts of remedies to cure a feather-picker to no avail. The Peepers would work for a few days and then the hen acclimated her vision around the Peepers and continued to feather-pick anyway. I wanted to believe I could rehabilitate an erring hen but it is more heartache and time-consuming than it's worth. Once we knew what our Cuckoo was doing we tried to isolate her but she was determined to get back to picking on her docile victims. We re-homed our Cuckoo Marans into an egg-seller's flock where there were no docile or small breeds for her to pick on and she entered at the bottom of the pecking order and there were no more feather-picking issues because all the other hens in the flock were just as big and pushy as her. She actually mellowed out being around peers of equal weight and assertiveness. If she didn't behave the egg-seller's alternative was to process her - she would've made a meaty meal had she not behaved!