Hawks

[Ariapina]

I've heard hawks can be pretty bold when it comes to humans contact and interfering with them trying to kill prey such as chickens.

The hawks around me (Porter, TX) don’t care at all if I try to scare them off. They have swooped down at me a few times even
there’s a golden eagle hanging around now that makes me nervous. He was sitting on the top of my netted garden area the other day and those things are huge no more free ranging for now.

 

[RRM]

Someone early on in this thread mentioned using an owl decoy to deter hawks. Unless you move the decoy very regularly the hawk will know it’s fake, they are too smart not to notice an owl sitting in the same spot day after day and figure out what it really is.

 

[Kay-SCL]

Anyone had any luck in deterring hawks? We live in a very rural area with heavy vegetation and alot of large oak and hickory trees. We like to let the flock free range but caught a hawk trying to kill one a few weeks ago. Since then we only let them out when we are out in the yard and put them up when we cant supervise. Looking for recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Well as you can see in the pic life got exciting and horrible. I have a coop with a small outdoor run attached. I have bird net over it except one small area so I can get in when I need to. This guy must have gone through that and into the coop to get my baby. Grrrrrr. So now I have out the net over the whole area put it higher on a post so I can now open gate and walk in. Also put up the fake owls, wind chimes, shiny objects in hopes he won’t go right through the bird netting. Today was my first try but I only let them alone for about an hour then I was out with them then I put them back in coop. Too scared yet. I will let you know and take some pics if it works

 

[Folly's place]

When we have a hawk visitation, we keep the flock locked in for two weeks or longer, until that hawk moves on elsewhere. Here losses have been either young birds or bantams, and the hawks I've seen have been Coopers hawks. Of course we also have Re tailed, Red Shouldered,
and owls. Keeping the birds in either all the time, or after an attack, pays off. We do have a lot of cover for the flock too, and birds who are older and have had experience with predators, which all helps.
Mary

 

[cmom]

I have netting covering all of my pens. I have had a couple of breaches. I didn't have quite enough netting so I bought some online but it wasn't what I thought it was, crappy, but I put it up anyway. I had a hawk find a place in the old netting where the zip tie I had was holding it together. My pens are 60' x 200'. The original netting was 50' so I had to fill in 10'. I put zip ties along connecting the two pieces together but over the years the zip ties deteriorated. I have since used hog rings. I had an owl go through the crappy netting three times and kill some birds. Each time I replaced it with the crappy netting. I did take the birds out of that coop and put them in another one and put a camera up and the owl came back. I got some good heavy duty netting and replaced the crappy netting. The owl came back and tried to go through the good netting and got caught. DH and I got it out and into a cage. I called some wildlife people and they came and got it. Prior I had a Red Tail hawk find a spot where the zip ties had come off and get into a pen and killed several pullets that weren't far from starting to lay. Good luck...