Responsibility to Secure Your Birds

[Rock Home Isle]

How about the responsibility to properly care for them? That's the one that gets me... posters lately that ask for advice since their ducklings/chicks/etc just keep dying off... any suggestions to change what they're feeding, doing, etc is met with the 'but that's what I did last time and those ones did fine!'

It doesn't make sense for a person to ask for advice, then reject the advice that is provided.

"No, no...sorry we can't accept that. We like killing our birds just fine the way we've been doing...."

Some peoples kids....I swear.

 

[MeepBeep]

It doesn't make sense for a person to ask for advice, then reject the advice that is provided.

Yet, it happens everyday, usually backed up with some flimsy anecdotal claims of how they know better...

 

[bobbi-j]

So I got a call last night to go and look at a coop. Seems the owners had left the pop-out door open and lost a lot of birds. The coop is about 30 yards from a river, and I was expecting the tell tail signs of raccoons.

NOPE...it was pretty graphic with lots of dead birds. I looked real close around the coop and run, I found a lot of people tracks. Looks like they had tried to look for sign as well and destroyed anything that would have been usable by me.

Based on what I'd seen in the past, my guess was a mink...a big one. Each of the dead birds had been bitten in the neck, and only one looked like any part of it had been eaten. It appeared that the mink killed one hen and ate a bit...then went on a killing spree.

Well when I said, "Mink", those people looked at me with this strange look and said, "We don't have mink in Colorado." They would not believe me at all...I've trapped many mink in Colorado, quite a few of them off their land.

But...NOPE....no mink in Colorado.

Now they think I'm crazy...oh well, probably not the only ones...

We don't even have a river nearby and we have mink! (We do, however, have a large slough and a couple of lakes close to us). My husband trapped for many years and caught many mink over those years. Apparently they love muskrat, which are also abundant here...

 

[MeepBeep]

So I got a call last night to go and look at a coop. Seems the owners had left the pop-out door open and lost a lot of birds. The coop is about 30 yards from a river, and I was expecting the tell tail signs of raccoons.

NOPE...it was pretty graphic with lots of dead birds. I looked real close around the coop and run, I found a lot of people tracks. Looks like they had tried to look for sign as well and destroyed anything that would have been usable by me.

Based on what I'd seen in the past, my guess was a mink...a big one. Each of the dead birds had been bitten in the neck, and only one looked like any part of it had been eaten. It appeared that the mink killed one hen and ate a bit...then went on a killing spree.

Well when I said, "Mink", those people looked at me with this strange look and said, "We don't have mink in Colorado." They would not believe me at all...I've trapped many mink in Colorado, quite a few of them off their land.

But...NOPE....no mink in Colorado.

Now they think I'm crazy...oh well, probably not the only ones...

It never amazes me how people will insist that if they didn't see it that it doesn't exist... Animals in the weasel family are a prime example, they are pretty much everywhere but incredibly shy and avoid human contact so they are rarely seen, but they most certainly are out there...

 

[bobbi-j]

It never amazes me how people will insist that if they didn't see it that it doesn't exist... Animals in the weasel family are a prime example, they are pretty much everywhere but incredibly shy and avoid human contact so they are rarely seen, but they most certainly are out there...

Kinda reminds me of 10th grade gym when we were required to change and shower in the locker room - the gym teacher said, "Just close your eyes and no one will see you!"

 

[speckledhen]

Lots of good advice (and frustration and irritation) in this thread. I have to say that I hate beyond measure when I have sold or given a bird to someone and it is killed because they did not have the proper set up for night. Predators come out during the day, of course, but at night is when the chickens are most vulnerable.

I have no issue with free range, but we do it smartly. I do it on a rotating basis with all my flocks and I have for the past 11 years. I have not lost even one bird to a predator. I keep saying the odds are that my time is coming to lose one and surely, with all the foxes, coyotes, coons, roaming dogs, etc, we have here, not to mention possums, cougars and bears (though the last two are less concern to me, generally), eventually, I will lose one. I credit our rooster brigade, our tree and shrub cover and our in-and-out presence during the day for our good fortune so far. I've seen foxes eying my flocks-three roosters stood on guard until we chased it away. I've had it out with a neighbor about his dog being up on our land. I've seen hawks dive on a group of birds, but the rooster intervened and got them to safety. The predators are here, whether I see them or not, they are all here. I hear coyotes and foxes at night. Have never seen a weasel but I know they are here.

We have a perimeter fence around just over 2 of our acres with driveway gate that is closed 24/7. Inside that perimeter is the steel chicken barn with hardware cloth hinged screens and locking doors, plus concrete apron all the way around as dig barrier. Around the barn is a spacious welded wire pen with two gates that are always closed. So, a predator must get into the perimeter fence, then get over/under the barn fence and then, get into the barn itself and into a pen if no chickens are outside. However, one or two groups at a time roam inside the large barn pen, then every other day or so, they are allowed out of that and into the 2 acre area to eat grass and clover; some groups do go all the way to the back corner of the perimeter fence, so I know if the fence was not there, my Barred Rock rooster, especially, would be out in the open pasture with his hens. On the other side of the perimeter fence is our recently created pasture so the large open area makes it so they can see danger on the ground coming toward them and have time to run. The main thing is that the barn is predator proof at night, when their vision is limited and they are stuck in their various pens and cannot get away. If something gets into that barn, it sure had to work for it.

If I suddenly did lose one or several to say, a coyote pack, they would most definitely be locked down and made to stay inside the barn pen, no free range until I felt the pack had moved on. That is the only logical/rational thing to do in that case, but some folks treat their birds as expendable. They seem to expect that's the way it is, they just suck up the losses and get more. I'm not sure why they are fine with that non-management style, but, well, poor birds. They do deserve better.

When I sell birds, I ask to see the coop setup or at least ask what their coop and pens are like. I am not against responsible free range, but I do want them to be as safe at night as they are used to being. I have refused to sell to someone recently off a FB yard sale site after discovering he has a breeding business for a large, aggressive dog breed (no, not pits or rotties) and has been sited for roaming and fighting dogs by the county. What that care got me was slandered all over FB, just blatant lies made up because I would not allow my young pair to go to his place and be torn apart by his dogs. Later, we discovered he's acquiring hundreds of birds and hoarding so I'm happy we found that information in time. I'm sure the next thing I'll hear is how disease is killing off all his new acquisitions.


and @Rock Home Isle , you said this:

Quote: ALL the time this happens! I get PM's to consult about sick birds or some other issue, I give sound advice and they keep asking me the same thing over and over again and ignoring what I told them. I mean, how many ways can you tell folks the same thing? I can't tell folks only what they want to hear. We have a lot of Queens (and Kings) of Denial, don't we?