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

 

[KingD]

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"

 

[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!

 

[Stephanie8806]

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

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.

 

[Stephanie8806]

I have only 2 pets so their coop is a small wooden tractor coop. For their first 2 years I had the coop under a portable carport canopy, 10' x 20', which I paid about $130 for (new) on ebay. It had 8 poles (some have only 3 on each side) so I put 8 t-posts in the ground next to each post and wired them together for more stability. Using the t-posts, we were able to wrap the bottom half of the entire carport frame with 4' hardware cloth and the top half with chicken wire. (We did have to do some oddball rigging to install a gate). The replaceable canopy lasted a couple of years and our neighborhood hawk family had no access. I've moved and have a different set up now, but if I hadn't done so, I planned to add connecting carports for a "chicken city."

Mobile tractors have always interested me, but our terrain is VERY uneven, steep, and brushy. We are up in the mountains, zero flat space except where we park our vehicles try as I might, I can’t think of a design that would make sense. We also have 9 currently, but our numbers will fluctuate as high as 24 in the summer and fall, with our new layers and meat birds. That’d be a heck of a tractor.

We also are near the top of a canyon and can get some insane wind. A tractor would get blown to Timbuktu we learned the hard way this year that anything not tied, screwed, AND glued down will get trashed

 

[Iheartbirds]

Mobile tractors have always interested me, but our terrain is VERY uneven, steep, and brushy. We are up in the mountains, zero flat space except where we park our vehicles try as I might, I can’t think of a design that would make sense. We also have 9 currently, but our numbers will fluctuate as high as 24 in the summer and fall, with our new layers and meat birds. That’d be a heck of a tractor.

We also are near the top of a canyon and can get some insane wind. A tractor would get blown to Timbuktu we learned the hard way this year that anything not tied, screwed, AND glued down will get trashed

Yeah, even when I was describing my set up, I knew that it was successful because of the environmental conditions in my area. It certainly wouldn't work a lot of places. Good luck!

 

[Stephanie8806]

Yeah, even when I was describing my set up, I knew that it was successful because of the environmental conditions in my area. It certainly wouldn't work a lot of places. Good luck!

I wish it did work here! I would love a chicken tractor! Thank you much! I’m sure it will help other people.

 

[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

 

[BReeder!]

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.

Netting is all you need over the top. Be sure the halls cannot get in through the sides anywhere and you are all set. I can see 3 hawk nests just walking out my back door right now. Or chickens have never been victim of a hawk attack though because we have netting. Cheap bird netting tears too easily and tends to have small openings (3/4" or 1") that don't allow leaves and heavy snow to pass through. I find netting on Amazon e now use that is nylon thread/rope with 2" openings. The larger openings and heavier material are great. It wasn't $100 either like some heavy aviary netting. I believe I paid $20-$25 for it and the net was 20ftx25ft I think. I used zip tires and steel cable along with appropriate hardware (eye bolts, barrel crimps, etc.) to suspend the netting over the run. All in I probably spent $50.

 

[Stephanie8806]

Netting is all you need over the top. Be sure the halls cannot get in through the sides anywhere and you are all set. I can see 3 hawk nests just walking out my back door right now. Or chickens have never been victim of a hawk attack though because we have netting. Cheap bird netting tears too easily and tends to have small openings (3/4" or 1") that don't allow leaves and heavy snow to pass through. I find netting on Amazon e now use that is nylon thread/rope with 2" openings. The larger openings and heavier material are great. It wasn't $100 either like some heavy aviary netting. I believe I paid $20-$25 for it and the net was 20ftx25ft I think. I used zip tires and steel cable along with appropriate hardware (eye bolts, barrel crimps, etc.) to suspend the netting over the run. All in I probably spent $50.

Thanks for the feedback! So far I’ve been having good luck with the 5/8” openings. If we had a deciduous tree anywhere in the vicinity I would definitely need bigger openings... but since the large pine tree above ours has small needles, they fall right through! And the snow doesn’t seem to accumulate on our netting. Although we get a good depth of snow out here, it is light and powdery and doesn’t stick to the fibers. I will check in the morning and update, we got 5 inches tonight and there’s supposed to be a little bit more Overnight. I’ll let you know what the accumulation looks like, if there is any.