Sparrows Stealing Food

[Chicken Smallhorn]

I have a 5' x 5' x 5' coop. During the day I only leave the small side hatch open, which is about 12" square.

The neighbourhood sparrows use this opening to steal my chookies' food. They are growing in number every day.

How can I keep these thieves out of my coop?

 

[Mattemma]

I have the repeating sparrow trap. It works,but attracts faster once you have one in there. I think the trap costs $50. I have had mine for about 2 years,and it is holding up well.

I recently bought a steve gilberson nest box trap. Once you get one you can probably figure out how to build your own. I have bluebird nestboxes from walmart for $8. I screwed in the trap and when I caught a sparrow I would put it in the other trap,and then THAT BIRD attracted more sparrows to the repeating trap.

I have not had any activity in my nest box lately,so I might have gotten rid of my sparrow problem. I also caught 2 bluebird and a chickadee. The repeating trap caught male/female cardinals and a few chipmunks. The trap is good for stralings too.

I would get the sparrow trap. It is nice not to have so many sparrows anymore.

 

[fussaguss]

get a plastic owl to put on top of the feed area. this worked well for us and was cheap.

 

[GarlicEater]

Got the repeating trap and the gilbertson trap pages bookmarked, thanks! I'm fascinated by all things trap.

I find there's a lot less trouble with sparrows once I went from feeding nothing but scratch to feeding layer pellets and keeping the coop area relatively clean of tempting food scraps. The land owner here is back from traveling and feeding his chickens up front more his way - scratch and food goodies all over, and so there are some sparrows always around.

The most annoying "sparrows" are "English sparrows' which are actually a Eurasian weaver finch. They are indeed a pest. They're more of an urban bird, and also where there's a lot of grain around like cattle feeding etc. Then there are STARLINGS. We have native sparrows around here and I don't want to trap them, just keep them from being a big problem by keeping my coop neat and the "bird candy" (scratch) under control.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Not only will they eat 3 times their weight in food every day but they will poop on everything but they will spread diseases and parasites to your chickens. I would suggest blocking any openings larger than 1/2"

 

[GarlicEater]

yeah .... hardware cloth.

I've actually noticed NONE around *my* coop.

 

[suebee]

This is going to sound stupid but I'd put up a bird feeder at the opposite end of the property. I never have birds getting chicken feed as long as I keep the bird feeder filled.