4loveofeggs
Hatching
- Jun 13, 2016
- 2
- 0
- 7
Although we had laying hens and chickens in our backyard(along with many colonies of bees), I am relatively new to raising chickens. We are looking into having a 70 sq feet chicken coop and going to build it ourselves with the help of a hired hand or two.
However, we have one domestic cat of ours who has killed birds before and left them as a "gift" on our doorstep. We also have a lot of feral cats that aren't ours and we don't fed them. They kill mice and rats for us, eat off the "head" and we throw away the rest.
My concern is having chickens who might get injured/killed by the either the one domestic cat or other feral cats. Should we just keep the chickens "contained" all the time to prevent this? A friend of ours said that he had chickens that rats killed also. However, since we have the feral cats killing the rats, I don't think rats would kill the chickens. What do you all more experienced people suggest: keeping the chickens contained all day/night is the only thing I can think of?
Thanks in advance for your input,
4loveofeggs
However, we have one domestic cat of ours who has killed birds before and left them as a "gift" on our doorstep. We also have a lot of feral cats that aren't ours and we don't fed them. They kill mice and rats for us, eat off the "head" and we throw away the rest.
My concern is having chickens who might get injured/killed by the either the one domestic cat or other feral cats. Should we just keep the chickens "contained" all the time to prevent this? A friend of ours said that he had chickens that rats killed also. However, since we have the feral cats killing the rats, I don't think rats would kill the chickens. What do you all more experienced people suggest: keeping the chickens contained all day/night is the only thing I can think of?
Thanks in advance for your input,
4loveofeggs