How should I deal with a halk?

[poultryrox11]

You see, we live near a bird sanctuary and the guy who owns it set free a HALK near our property.

Not only that, but this halk is not scared of people because he was nursed back to health BY HAND. He comes every day and tries to get my chickens.

In the 1 to 2 years that we have had chickens we have not lost 1, this halk might ruin that. Not to mention this halk has been on top of three chickens and almost carried off one. What should I do?

 

[Dar]

place netting over your run

 

[poultryrox11]

Quote:
You think it'll work?

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

You cannot do anything except maybe hang some overhead netting for your chickens- or try hanging CDs or wire up to try to keep it away. They are protected by law (and they do watch this forum for lawbreakers).

I have hawks too. When they get really hungry I put netting up for my chickens overhead. I have my netting down just in case of snow over most of my chicken yard now. But two of my pens still have netting up. I have witnessed a hawk BOUNCE off my netting before trying to grab silkies.

They do eat a lot of mice, so the good news is, your mice population might decrease!

You can get a package of bird netting 75 feet long x 14 feet wide or so for $35 at my feed store. It will fall down with snow, though. I use metal chicken wire 2" for my growout pen- doesn't fall down during snow. It costs I think $15 for 50 feet of it, 3 feet wide.

 

[poultryrox11]

We keep our chickens free range, but, I suppose we could build a run. Our ducks have a run with chicken wire all over it.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Quote:
I have noticed that at times the hawks seem really hungry- other times, they don't circle overhead but hang out over the field nearby just satisfied with mice.

You could just pen them up when it's bad- is one idea.

 

[poultryrox11]

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I thought it was legal to kill a halk if it was threatening your livestock? I would never kill a halk anyway, but, still.
I don't know, i'll take your advice.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Quote:
I thought it was legal to kill a halk if it was threatening your livestock? I would never kill a halk anyway, but, still.

Everyone says on here that it's not legal- I wouldn't have known myself- had never heard of it (I personally would never think of hurting one). You can do a search for "hawks protected" or something like that in the search bar to see if you can find posts on it.

I recall one thread where someone was saying it might be state law that you could hurt one- but then other people said that the federal law would override it???? I don't know and wouldn't risk it.

 

[poultryrox11]

I agree, I would never hurt one either I was just confused.

 

[Martin Grove Farm]

We have agriculture netting over our run. We get a lot of snow and have never had to take the netting down. Mind you we paid close to $400.00 to cover an area of about 60x60. There was quite a bit left over and we have placed the net over top of the trees that are in there so our birds have about 25 feet that they can go up. We have seen hawks dive down to try and get a chicken only to bounce off the netting. Now the hawks are getting our racing pigeons. Not too much we can do about that except keep them in till later in the day. By mid morning, the hawks have already had a meal so my pigeons are pretty safe. With the chickens it's more the larger hawks that will kill or carry away. Our pigeons are too fast for them. We have to watch out for the Coopers hawk as they are as fast as a pigeon and can dip and dive too.

Here, at least in our part of Canada, hawks are protected and you can't harm, kill or capture one.