STARLING TAKEOVER.....HELP!

[CRYROLFE]

Well, I'm up to ears in Starlings.

Here is our coop....it's the Garden Coop




Close up of door



The chickens are in a fenced in yard so they run around all day.
There is no door to the coop itself except the big people size door.
We only leave it open a little bit to let the girls go in and out but the Starlings also get in there and eat the chicken food (and probably have mites etc).
We were thinking of hanging strips of weighted screen to allow chickens to walk through but deter the other birds....do you think this will work?
Any ideas/photos would be wonderful!!!

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

You can put your feed in a treadle feeder.

If you go to Gallo del cielo's byc page, and scroll down, he has a pic of his strips at the coop door. You could also use a plastic shower curtain liner (the heavy duty kind).

 

[llandry]

What if you cut a small door in the bottom of the people sized door. Kind of like a dog door. That's what we have and we hook it open during the day and hook it closed at night. Do you think the birds would go into this little opening?

 

[llandry]

Love the garden coop BTW. Your Boston terrier too. I have two of them

 

[StephieSky]

Get a fake cat. No I'm not kidding
Your chickens will quickly learn that the cat is fake or not care at all. The wild starlings on the other hand are constantly exposed to cats that are on the hunt.
I have a fake cat on my front porch. They were nesting in the rafters above the wysteria.
The starlings haven't been back.

 

[llandry]

This is a great idea. Every grassy field by me has wooden cut outs of a dog in it to scare away Canadian geese. They're so stupid looking but work great. We also have an owl statue on one of our dock bulkhead poles to scare away seagulls from rooting on them. Works great too. I vote fake cat idea!

 

[CRYROLFE]

I haven't tried the fake cat....lol....too funny. I do have a fake owl but they don't care about it....it's head even rotates around.
The door won't work....We tried hanging down a screen so that the chickens had to push in and the starlings just push in too!!! I hate them btw.