Keeping hawks out

[SweetLittleChicks]

Well we aren’t moving the coop, just moving the chicken door to the other side of the coop to where it can be in the portion that we can completely enclose. The coop does get closed and locked at night. It’s very secure. The hawk entered through the chickens access door in the middle of the day to kill the second chicken. Cant exactly close their door all day.

I’m personally not convinced adding hiding spots will help much. Our entire 8x10 coop is elevated, about 24 inches off the ground, and the first chicken was killed under the coop and the hawk drug her out into the run to eat her head.

The netting will certainly be secured well. No worries there. That’s interesting about owls attracting other predators... how does that work? I hear owls and hawks are natural enemies, and I would think things like weasels would avoid birds of prey?

The coop you have now can be used as ur spare coop i suggest to make another brand new coop with preadotor proof run and coop and i suggest spending lots of money on ur chicken cooop and roost and nesting box and speed a decent amount on ur run AND MAKE SURE to add a meteal roost and buy a rooster if you dont have a good one it very impiortant to have a rooster he will warn and portect his hens and put everbody in line and pick his head hens sorry for bad grammer

 

[Stephanie8806]

The photo for this thread actually isn't a hawk. It's a red kite. A European species of carrion eating bird. Would never take a hen.
Just thought I would mention it so that people don't look at the picture and think "ooooh I've seen those around, let's lock the hens up"

It’s interesting! I just noticed that this thread was featured now! Pretty cool!

 

[SweetLittleChicks]

I know it’s not documented well here, but apart from the chickens door, our coop is incredibly predator proof. Scrapping the coop and rebuilding is not plausible or desirable for us. We actually spent a lot of time and LOTS of money building this coop and it’s very well done(not meaning to toot my own horn, but it is). I’m not here to justify what I’ve spent or all the research I did though. In my main post, I asked opinions about a few deterrent options: netting, decoys, and flashy tape. Things of that sort... because I explained that solid roofing the entire run isn’t plausible in our environment/terrain.

There is one simple fix that we will be doing in the spring to move the chickens door to a side that has a metal awning and ground to waves hardware cloth on two of the three sides. That side of the coop is not picture in this thread. We will be building the final fence wall there. A $100 fix. In future, maybe don’t suggest someone scrap their entire coop if you don’t know the components of their current one? Which actually already has almost every component you suggested... It could be pretty disheartening for someone with limited means.

Well than I hav no idea I was gonna tell you to put a hard netting not the one you Have the 2 by square hard mesh its very easey everyone could do it or put a over which is also easey I can do by myself less than 30 minutes but if you don’t want to I can understand

 

[Stephanie8806]

Sounds like you have some smart and hungry hawks. We have owl decoys and cds flashing to deture attacks. We do have raptors and we see them way to close for comfort but there have been no known attacks or deaths since March. We have resigned ourselves to the fact that we will loose more to raptor attacks but they will have to work VERY HARD to do it.

It’s interesting, we free ranged all year and didn’t have any problems with the hawks. But it was a super foggy day with zero visibility and they obviously knew where the chickens lived. I hear hawks don’t like to fly in the fog, so I think it went for the easy meal that was corralled. Probably just sat in the lowest branches of the tree above the run and picked one... and then another. I think on clear days where the chickens have free range and the hawks have other options, we won’t have problems... but I’m not ready to test that theory quite yet I guess this is their migratory time too, so maybe it was just the perfect storm?!

 

[Stephanie8806]

I found that if my chickens can run under bushes, they can escape a hawk. When they didn't have that option they got trapped. We now have a very large run, 15 x 25 x 15. We were able to cover it with hardware cloth. I understand you don't have that option, but even netting will help.

I think that’s why we didn’t have problems when they free ranged... They could hide in the ground cover. Our run is comparable! Odd measurements, something like 17x32, 10 feet tall. And the coop is 8x10, elevated. I love the rustic work-with-what-we-had style, but it would have been nice to have level ground or squared up/even posts to add either solid or fenced roofing. Oh well!

 

[chickenchicksc]

Well we aren’t moving the coop, just moving the chicken door to the other side of the coop to where it can be in the portion that we can completely enclose. The coop does get closed and locked at night. It’s very secure. The hawk entered through the chickens access door in the middle of the day to kill the second chicken. Cant exactly close their door all day.

I’m personally not convinced adding hiding spots will help much. Our entire 8x10 coop is elevated, about 24 inches off the ground, and the first chicken was killed under the coop and the hawk drug her out into the run to eat her head.

The netting will certainly be secured well. No worries there. That’s interesting about owls attracting other predators... how does that work? I hear owls and hawks are natural enemies, and I would think things like weasels would avoid birds of prey?

If it just ate her head it’s not a hawk it’s weasel or possums, raccoon, fisher , they will eat just the head

 

[Stephanie8806]

Do you have a rooster? My Rooster took on a hawk and kicked his butt. Feathers flying everywhere. Baba rooster last a toenail, but came out on top, and the hawk never came back. I also befriended a murder of crows. I just love saying that. They live in the big madrona right by the co-op, and due to their extreme territoriality, there isn't one flying predator allowed in their airspace. They protect my entire 15 acre farm. So yeah, I feed them juicy scraps, to keep them around. I see them chase off hawks and eagles all the time.

We don’t have a rooster yet. Our girls were chicks purchased from our local farm supply store. This year, however, we will be hatching a dozen eggs from a small private breeder, so I’m really hoping we get one or two!

We have some ravens out by us! We live in a narrow canyon, that’s a part of a series of finger ridges. I think they can hop from gully to fully depending on the day. The hawks are here some days, some days it’s ravens... so I don’t know!

 

[Fintechie]

Do ravens or turkey vultures attack chickens? Now and then I have literally hundreds of ravens gathering at tree tops outside my backyard, and five turkey vultures once ? So far they haven’t showed interest in chickens ( knocking on wood)

I have never saw this many predators around my house in previous three years living in the same house! Something about 2020

 

[Ohchickfarming]

Hey there all! This week we lost two chickens to a hawk, both decapitated, one in the run and one in the coop through the chickens door. We are sure it was a hawk. Part of our run is going to be able to be completely closed off, but for the rest I’m entertaining several options for the other portion of the run. I’m here to see what actually works and what isn’t worth the time or money.

Our run has 9 foot high fencing, with no roof or barrier over the top apart from the branches of a MASSIVE Douglas fir that cover the open air part of the run(roughly 25’x18’). The tree is the reason we haven’t had hawk trouble until now, I think, as a hawk isn’t able to fly and dive like it normally does. Because of the steep grade of our landscape, heavy winter snowfall, and asymmetrical layout of the run, installing actual fencing or solid roof would be incredibly complicated and cost prohibitive.

We are going to be hanging aviary netting of some sort, but I have also been reading that reflective tape products and owl decoys can have a decent effect on deterring birds of prey. Have you had luck with any of these methods, or any others?

We live in the mountains, the coop is off grid, the coop itself is extremely well built and only needs a change in location of the chicken door to become essentially bear proof. And although not ramshackle, the run is a bit more of a little rustic construct. We do free range our birds and have never had problems. I’m about as “okay” as one can be with the idea that sometimes predation is going to happen, but I’m annoyed that it happened in the run, and simply infuriated that the coop became compromised. Just trying to do my best to keep their home sacred and increase the protection in their fenced run.

I used bird netting from Amazon after I lost one of my pullets. Seems to work great. The hawk kept coming back after it tasted the first chicken head! Was never able to get in and it kept the chickens in when the hawk showed up. When we lost ours it had flown out of the run to escape the hawk but in the end thats what got her .

 

[Stephanie8806]

Squirrels are good too. We have some brave ones that run up the tree barking and messing with the hawks that sit in the tree tops.

Oh man, Well we have squirrels coming out our ears glad they serve a purpose!

I also looked up hawk migrations, and found that we love right in a major migration corridor in Washington State Explains a lot! But I think the migration should be over, as far as I can tell. Haven’t even heard a hawk in two weeks.

Link to the site that I got the migration map from:
https://www.nhpr.org/post/something-wild-traveling-broad-winged-hawks#stream/0