Huge red tail

[SabongStuff]

Huge red tail near my coop today. He was facing the other direction. My girls and roo went to the coop a little earlier tonight.

 

[nchls school]

If I had to choose between red tails and small hawks to have in the yard I'd pick the red tail. With big hawks the poultry have a chance to hide when warning calls a sounded. There is no warning calls when it's a small hawk. I've seen then enter the yard through the branches and trunks, and because they're small the roosters ignore them until it's too late. The larger hawks dive from the air and the danger is when a bird is out in the open alone. Small hawks dive from a tree and the damage is done before the poultry even know it's there.

 

[cmom]

I had a Red Tail get into one of my pens. My pens are covered but it found a space which I have since fixed. I was away on an appointment and some errands and when I got home I heard the birds going crazy and went to investigate. I saw several bodies in the pen then saw the hawk. Here are a few of the bodies of some pullets that weren't far from starting to lay.

 

[SegiDream]

I had a Red Tail get into one of my pens. My pens are covered but it found a space which I have since fixed. I was away on an appointment and some errands and when I got home I heard the birds going crazy and went to investigate. I saw several bodies in the pen then saw the hawk. Here are a few of the bodies of some pullets that weren't far from starting to lay.
View attachment 2362211

Ugh I hate that for you, that's terrible. I wonder if hawks associate a missing vehicle with no humans. My kids are doing at home school learning and twice I have left the house to do shopping or otherwise and my daughter witnessed a hawk swooping around above the coop.

How big was the opening that it got through? Our run area is t-posts and coated chicken wire inside a fenced backyard. I'm working on covering the run area with a netting material but the area that bothers me most is above the gate area because I can't attach netting to the gate itself...

 

[cmom]

My pens are covered with heavy duty netting. I had to put it up in sections and fasten the sections together. I used zip ties. They had deteriorated and came off and left a gap of about a foot. I don't have the netting attached to the gates but so far nothing has breached that space. The netting is attached to the coops a little higher than the gates so they don't interfere with them. I have since used hog rings to attach the sections of netting together. No more zip ties. I ran out of the good netting and bought some crappy netting which wasn't what I thought, it was online. I should have returned it. An owl went through the crappy netting and killed some birds. I moved them to another coop and replaced it with another piece of the crappy netting because that is all I had at the time. I have replaced it with some good netting. I put a camera in that pen and got a picture of the owl going through the netting again. It managed to get back out. After I replaced the crappy netting with some good netting the owl tried again but this time got caught in the netting. We managed to get it out and into a cage. I called a wildlife rescue and they came and took it. They said they had a release area so it shouldn't come back. It was persistent once it found out it could go through the crappy netting. This is the replacement netting that the owl got caught in.

This is like the netting I have now.
https://www.amazon.com/Aviary-Netti...keywords=aviary+netting&qid=1602010639&sr=8-2

I don't think this is the same owl.

 

[cmom]

Ugh I hate that for you, that's terrible. I wonder if hawks associate a missing vehicle with no humans. My kids are doing at home school learning and twice I have left the house to do shopping or otherwise and my daughter witnessed a hawk swooping around above the coop.

How big was the opening that it got through? Our run area is t-posts and coated chicken wire inside a fenced backyard. I'm working on covering the run area with a netting material but the area that bothers me most is above the gate area because I can't attach netting to the gate itself...

I don't think the hawk noticed my car. It's nowhere near the coops. It saw an opening and took it. I had been seeing the hawk around but wasn't aware of the gap until the kill. I have since seen more hawks but so far so good.

 

[SegiDream]

Thank you! All the info really helps. Your run area(s) look a lot like ours right now, pretty sure I got some inspiration from you back in the spring when I put the first one together. The owl story is crazy and amazing! Wow! Beautiful creatures just wish these predators didn't find chicken so tasty.

I am using thin plastic deer/garden netting because it is what we have on hand - used it for 6 months around the garden, though I plan to upgrade when we can... it's a large run. Oops I used big zip ties but I'll probably use those hog rings with the upgrade, the zip ties were meant to be temporary like the netting anyways. Across the middle I overlapped 4-6" of the netting and zip tied spaced 6" apart, and some zip ties on the overlapped part. I was going to put some tin cans over the top of the t-posts so if it pulls it won't tear...

Above the gate areas I have a dark heavy tarp like material. It is very sturdy, if something hits that from above it will be like a trampoline for sure. It's maybe a 6 inch gap between the gate and that tarp and that all comes together right by the coop too.. I have strung wire across the gap in the meantime from the coop to the t posts and because of how the tarp hangs down it visually looks like there's not a gap there. I'm just not sure what else I can do with it.

I lock the chickens up in the coop every night and sit out there with them to supervise before they go up in the coop. I almost always hear an owl calling at 7pm from a distance. We've found little raccoon paw prints on the coop walls where one has investigated and then another day I suspect raccoons climbed up on the coop and knocked stuff off. Made me mad cause they broke my little emergency radio and slobbered on it. This morning my daughter went to let the chickens out and comes running back because a rat had gotten stuck in the chicken wire of the run and died that was a little freaky... I can only guess that it was looking for fallen walnuts and pecans or leftovers because I don't leave any food out. I can't wait until we get a camera up facing that area and I can monitor exactly who and what is visiting. Gonna put out a live cage trap tonight I think.

Sorry for the rabbit trail. Thanks for the info!!

 

[cmom]

I love my cameras.

 

[Weeg]

You can try these hawk scares- I have never used them, but they seem to have good reviews. They have them in a tape, and spiral form too. Heres the amazon page- https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Hawk+scares&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

 

[alwaystj9]

I have had no luck with the tape, hanging CDs, the fake owl, the fake hawk....