keeping cats and chickens?

[rosiekitty94]

we have tons of stray cats around our house. I think most of them were dropped off by somebody because they all like humans and are litter trained. Any way, when the chickens are older I would like to let them free range but quite a few of the resident male cats can hardly leave butterflies alone. What are some ways to keep the cats away from the chickens without hurting the cats? It has been suggested that I stand guard with a water gun but I don't know if that will deter them. Any ideas?

 

[thomasboyle]

If you have adult chickens, they can usually teach the cats to leave them alone. I have 2 barn cats that when they started to show an interest in the birds, the chickens would charge them and peck them on the nose. That ended the cats interest! They largely ignore them now, and I have even seen them sleeping together on the lawn. But since you are not dealing with your own cats, but strays / ferals etc, you need to watch each one, as most will probably be docile towards them, but not all will be.

 

[gallavant]

Live trap them and send them to animal control. We lost several of our chickens & peeps to a feral cat. I know it sounds really cruel, but wild cats reproduce like crazy, they get sick and suffer, they get rabies, they put domesticated cats at risk for all sorts of problems: you may have a feral cat rescue in your area, if so, contact them - but my experience is that no starving feral cat will turn down a chicken dinner.

 

[rosiekitty94]

Thanks everybody! over the past few months we have been live trapping and fixing/vaccinating the ferals in our area. Apparently not all of them are feral as quite a few of them hang around in our garage. Our resident tom cat chases away all the real ferals and I can control him and all the other tame ones. I just hope the chickens don't hurt the cats!