Houston, We Have a Hawk Problem

[Redhead Rae]

My in-laws (who live in a house behind ours) looked out their back window onto our shared backyard and saw something next to one of our brooder pens. It wasn’t one of our adult guineas. It was the wrong color.

They get a little closer and see it is a hawk trying to get at my replacement guineas and Heritage Cornish babies.

My FIL gets closer and the Hawk won’t budge.

Even closer, still won’t budge

Closer

Within 6 ft of the bird and it didn’t fly off until my FIL flapped his arms at it.

It flies off to a satellite dish 20 ft away from the pen and perches there until my FIL walks towards it

My FIL had to chase it 3 more times before it left the area. After chasing it off it came back again and was being more aggressive trying to get in.

For now, this is our solution. Orange snow fencing about a foot away from the pen. No wonder why all my birds have been hiding.

 

[AidKD]

Have you tried shooting at it?

 

[Redhead Rae]

Have you tried shooting at it?

Illegal, unless you mean shooting in its general direction to scare it off. No we haven’t tried shooting it or shooting to scare it.

 

[Rldad1]

Is that all your protection? It will be back. Looks like a young red tail. You have proof it was attacking your flock. May have to shoot. Unless you tell, no one knows.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Good luck!

 

[Fishychix]

I mentioned a fox in our neighborhood earlier, it got 3 of their chickens apparently! We also have a few hawks in our area. Scary!

 

[Folly's place]

Time to up your game as far as protecting these little pens is concerned. Can you group them under netting and a fence?
Absolutely don't shoot at this hawk!
Mary

 

[Redhead Rae]

Is that all your protection? It will be back. Looks like a young red tail. You have proof it was attacking your flock. May have to shoot. Unless you tell, no one knows.

The wire affixed to the PVC frame is 1/2 chicken wire in a nice thick gage. It is really nice stuff. The Hawk was really trying to get into the pen but wasn’t succeeding. I don’t think it could get into the top without getting tangled. I really wish we had a LSG dog now. We haven’t gotten around to it yet. I just put up the snow fencing as an extra barrier. I might string some twine across the back yard to help deter it from flying in.

 

[Redhead Rae]

Time to up your game as far as protecting these little pens is concerned. Can you group them under netting and a fence?
Absolutely don't shoot at this hawk!
Mary

I do have some rope bird netting. I don’t want to make it too difficult to get to or to move pens around as we move them to fresh grass very few days.

 

[Redhead Rae]

Well, I just saw the blasted thing perched on my other pvc pen. However it wasn’t interested in my 10week + old chicks that are in that pen, but in the 2-6 week old morsels in the smaller pen. He was perched there to scout out the changes we made to the smaller pen. Didn’t stop him from scaring the crap out of my older chicks though.