Raven killing chickens

[onwingandhoof]

I have a single raven that has been hanging around my back yard. It has been stealing eggs right out of my duck house and attempting to steal them from the turky coop (Thomas seems to be catching him in the act and I just get cracked eggs). probably stealing chicken eggs as well. This Raven has been so brazen as to scoop down and snatch a stunned woodpecker with my husband 6 ft away and eat the poor bird alive and screaming.
We have been sending the dog out to chaise it off when we see it (they are smart birds only around in the morning as the fowl are laying). Yesterday I was in the yard heard my rooster and then a hen calling alarm. I turned to see the raven dive bomb a chicken as she was sunning herself. The alert got the hen moving and she only lost a few feathers. But this brazen bird sat on the coop picking through the feathers as I screamed and ran toward it throwing the nearest thing; a soccer ball.
This morning even though my dog has been out almost the entire morning the raven got an english game hen. I found only her wings inside the duck run of all places (raven probably brought her there to eat where the dog couldnt get it).

I live in a rural area but there is restrictions on discharging a fire arm. Mind you it flys off pretty quickly as we appear so not easy to shoot anyway. I tried a pellet gun but it just scares it off for an hour or so. We have tried preaditor decoys, it dont care. I can not cover the runs with hardwire cloth as I live in somewhat northern Canada. I have used it in the past only to have thousands of dollars spent collapse after a large snow fall overnight before I can get the snow off the hardwire cloth.
I'm at my witts end any solutions or suggestions from anyone?

I dont have this issue. But the fishing line strung across is a great idea. This will prevent snow build up as well well as deter the raven. Make sure to string it too close to fly into so its caught on the way in. Keep in mind they are highly intelligent. So keep the fishing line close and cross it again like a checker board.

 

[Ila88]

Thank you for these suggestions. We have a bad raven too. Brazen is right.

 

[Mtn Homestead]

We are experiencing huge losses from ravens, as well. Unfortunately, we didn't notice until we had already lost a few dozen chicks (we had a batch of 100 & they run around so much, I don't regularly count them). I saw ravens out by our Salatin-style tractors & figured, like others have claimed, that they were simply capitalizing on another predator's work pulling chickens out from under the tractors.

However, one morning, my husband happened to check before leaving for work & saw the ravens going around the tractor pulling out the 2"x4" blocks we'd placed around the tractor in the dips of the pasture. The ravens were reaching under the edges in the back of the tractor where the metal is, and pulling out whatever body parts were near enough to grab.

They pull off feathers, toes... whatever they can reach. If they can get a good enough grip on something, they'll grab hold & drag the whole pullet/cockerel out from under the tractor and eat it. They're even taking 13 week old birds at this point. One morning, all they were able to get was a few feathers, so they flew into our chicken coop, took 6-10 eggs and smashed them on the floor outside the coop in the middle of the barn. They didn't even eat them. Just made a mess to show they were upset. They're smart & usually fly away before we can get close enough to do anything about them. Obviously, we have some holes to plug up where they are entering the coop/barn and run, but the tractors I'm a little bit stumped! We ordered a dead raven decoy, but couldn't get one to ship earlier than the end of July. They've eaten 80 birds so far up to 13 weeks old.

I understand the skepticism of some here, because I thought for sure it had to have been ravens working with a 4-legged predator of some sort at first, but since they were caught in the act all by themselves I know it's just ravens.

We're working on getting our pasture completely fenced so we can possibly get a some livestock guardians out there. All this just to say, yes, ravens can & do kill - they are not merely scavengers piggybacking on other predators, they are ravenous opportunists and smart enough to figure out ways to hunt & kill.

 

[Claudia p]

I can't imagine a crow/raven attacking a full grown chicken. Never in my 64 years of life have I ever seen a crow/raven attack a bird (and I'm a birdwatcher) although they do attack nests of young baby birds.

I had a 8 weeks call duck killed by a raven 2 days ago, today he almost killed one silky chicken 3 months old( she is bad injured, most likely she won't survive).
The raven doesn't even care for chicken/ Doogie food, just yo kill live poultry!

 

[SillyChickenPNW]

I'm very interested in this as we have 2 ravens that built a nest above our garden/ chicken run. They have plucked off 3 full grown hens in the last 2 days. It seems they just rip the heads off and leave the rest of the body, or our dogs scared them off . Yesterday, in the matter of 10 minutes while I was in the house they got a hen and dropped its body in our other garden area, over 100 yards away. They have also been tearing out screens from new windows we installed in our shop. Brand new windows and the screens were taken out in chunks and taken away. We don't want to shoot them but they are really getting aggressive. We haven't had a problem with ravens until this summer. We are going to try to net the run, but we get a lot of wet heavy snow in our area and I'm afraid it's just going to fall under the snow load. The ravens are not scared of the pellet gun at all. We're down to 1 hen and a rooster and they are traumatized. Not sure what to do.

 

[wild chick]

I've still not seen an actual photo or video of a raven killing a chicken. I'm seeing these stories, but no proof. As I said before (pg 3 on this thread) - they aren't in the family of hawks and owls, they don't have beaks to carry a full grown chicken 100 yards and they don't use talons to kill like an owl or eagle. And they never carry with their feet, they carry anything away in its beak. If you had a mink or raccoon come in and rip a chickens head off and drag the carcass out, yes, all the ravens will come feast on the chicken. They will kill small chicks and steal eggs from your chicken coop. But tearing out screens in chunks? Really this sounds like a 4 legged predator not a winged one. Invest in a critter cam so you can share photos of the varmint. I was certain I had a coyote killing my chickens because I see coyotes around but the critter cam proved it was a bobcat. We can all assume things, but somebody has to show me a video of a raven killing a hen and flying off with it before I believe it.

 

[LowcoMatt]

Thankfully not had problems with my chickens or babies, but I watched a raven destroy a nearly full grown mockingbird, peck the head and eyes until it was dead, then carry it off. All happened within 20' of me. This was less than 1/4mi from my home.