Official BYC Poll: The Worst Predator

[KazAnder Farms]

well welcome to the chicken raising business! it is a very rewarding business, unless you plan to make a profit on it.

 

[Opa]

Last year I got tired of constantly setting the life traps and catching cats or finding the bait gone. Sometimes the coons would turn the trap over to get the bait. Leg hold traps work but a a hassle to set and I'd have to worring about catching my dog or someones pet. Then I decided to start using these dog proof traps by Duke. End of problem.

 

[Churkenduse]

I lost another last night, somehow a groundhog got into the coop, now groundhogs do not eat chickens, so he must have gone in to eat their food and then scared my girls, one hen got a broken wing. She was in bad shape, I could not catch her to fix her wing and she hid under my very low deck. I went to check her this morning and she was gone, I suspect the fox came back and got her, I heard something last night but nothing to be alarmed about.
Once they find they have an easy meal, no matter who they are our chickens are in trouble, I am going to buy motion sensors maybe that might help if the light goes on when the approach the coop.

If we do all we can do then that is all we can do....period

I just got good news my girl must have been hiding somewhere, I could not find her. But when I put out a bread omelette, they love them, she came out from I do not know where, she appears fine.
I still cannot get near her to fix her wing. But I am happy she looks good.

 

[theghostandmrchicken]

Event though I/we have yet to get chickens I would think that man is the most responsable for unnecassary chicken deaths.
This is because humans can kill for nearly any reason and animals only kill for food or protection.
Plus, as humans we have the ability to greatly outhink an animal.

 

[flowergirl60]

Quote:
Very well said.

 

[Opa]

Not wanting to belittle anyone's opinion but you are misinformed about man being the only animal to kill unnecessarily. Dogs are well known for chasing and killing livestock, including chickens, just for the thrill. Weasels and mink will often kill all the birds in an entire coop and eat very little. Coons are quilty of the same as well.

 

[GallusGal]

Haven't lost any of my chooks to predators yet, but the only one I persistently had to worry about before I had a coop with a roof was raptors. They are fast, stealthy, and they rarely miss their mark.

Though, if you want to get technical, man is unquestionably the biggest predator of the domesticated chicken, as in the US alone we eat something like 8 billion of them annually

 

[Borncountry419]

Quote:
Yup, I definitely agree. This winter I had a mink come visit. He bit holes in the necks or heads of all the birds he killed. Didn't eat any part of them. Thankfully I caught him. I thought we were talking about chicken predators here anyway? I've never heard of a human killing chickens for fun, especially not someone else's birds. So y'all, I would worry more about the coons and mink, and less about your rabid neighbor coming to kill your birds. Lol.

 

[Churkenduse]

(prĕd'ə-tər, -tôr')
n.
1.An organism that lives by preying on other organisms.
2.One that victimizes, plunders, or destroys, especially for one's own gain


In defense of man, this is not a description of a human. We kill systematically for food. Normally, and there are exception, man eats for sustenance not the pleasure of hunting down a chicken and destroying it. IMHO we should turn away from man and talk solely about the true predators, hawks etc. Because as far as man killing unnecessarily, that is bunk, man kills chickens for food, it is necessary. For me I chose not to eat my chickens and have for many years refrained from eating animals in general. So unless you do not eat any animals we cannot talk about how terrible man is for killing them. Because killing them only makes us just like THEM. In essence you are admitting to being a predator yourself. Right?, if you eat animals you are a predator it doesn’t matter who does the killing.

 

[GallusGal]

... humans ARE predatory mammals, though. I have been a vegan for eleven years and I have no qualms admitting that biologically, I am an omnivore and predator. We are not true carnivores, but that does not change the fact that we prey on other species just like a black bear or other predatory omnivore does. Our natural history confirms as much, and while we developed argiculture to have a constant availability of prey, that doesn't change biology. On a very literal level, the #1 predator of chickens is humans, because we kill and eat more of them than any other species does.

I also see a lot of talk about predators killing "for the fun of it," but realistically what we are seeing is an instinctive behavioral response gone haywire by being thrown into an unnatural context. In nature, opportunities like a massive group of confined and fairly helpless prey concentrated in one spot just doesn't happen. Predatory responses are elicited by certain behaviors and conditions, and a large ammount of easy prey flapping around squawking and panicking is really too much stimulus and typically results in a massive overkill. It's not much different than working your cat into a frenzy with the rapid movements of a laser pointer - they just can't help themselves! But very little of this could be attributed to a sense of "fun" as there is little to nothing in literature indicating that wild predators are flooded with pleasure chemicals when they kill - and really, those would be counterintuitive since most pleasure biochemicals tend to have effects like lowering heart rate, reducing aggression, producing calm behaviors, etc.

All that being said, I do agree that humans do not really fit this poll's intended purpose though, as I can assume it was asking what species people had their most losses attributed to. When I worked at an animal sanctuary, the big culprits were rats and mink; they seem very adept at getting into virtually any enclosure, and all it took was a weak hen staying on the ground... gone. I've never lost any of my chickens but my neighbors constantly lost hers to hawks as she did not contain them properly. I decided to vote "rat" on the poll because I feel they are the hardest to keep out. You can keep foxes, raccoons, coyote, etc. out with appropriate fences, you can deter hawks with a roof on your coop or run, but those darned rats seem to find ways to get into even the most secure coops.