Tethering

[Wolf-Kim]

Anyone have any experience with making good tethers for their birds?

I have a few roosters too many and I would like to tether them, so they would be able to come out of their small cages and stretch their wings, enjoy the sun, and forage a little bit.

If I just let them out of their cages they immediately run to the breeding cages and fight through the wire fence, usually drawing blood. I know it's natural but my breeding roos are my best roos and my favorite, I don't like to come hom and see their combs bloodied through fence-fighting.

The extra roosters have individual cages, but I like to let them out. I hate to keep them cooped up just because they are not in use just yet as breeders. A couple of them are "back-ups", to be used if something happens to my main breeder.

-Kim

 

[raindrop]

Other than using baling twine as a kid to convince my chicken "friends" to hang out with me in my fort in the pasture, I don't have experience, but why don't you model a tether out of a falconry design? I bet a Google search would be helpful, I used to work in raptor rehab and I think they just used a very soft, fairly wide, leather strip with a T-shape cut in one end and a hole reinforced with a grommet in the other end to clip the lead to.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

LOL. I like your choice of words. Using tethers to "convince" or "friends" to stick around. LOL. I just imagine someone tied up in a chair being forced to listen "how someone's day was".

I didn't think about the falconry tethers. I will have to look that up for design and construction.

Now does anyone have any advice for me tethering birds in the yard, as far as predator trouble? It would only be during daylight hours. Do small shelters(cardboard boxes, pieces of wood leaned against each other or up against something else, overturned barrels) keep them safe from hawks? Are hawks a huge issue with tethered roosters?

-Kim

 

[Kanchii]

All I know is that people do that with sometimes hundreds of roosters. Any birds are in danger to hawks if they aren't covered by something, but unless you put neeting up for a big space theres nothing you can really do about that.

 

[Cetawin]

I have made tether for hawks, falcons, ospreys and eagles using buckskin. After I tan the deer hide, I make a loop for the birds 'ankle' area and attach a 6' - 10' buckskin braided tether lead.

If it will hold an eagle, a rooster should be no problem for it.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Are hawk predations on tethered poultry high, even if they have shelter?

I know that most people tether near an A-frame or overturned barrel so the poultry has shelter, but is this because of hawks or temperature and weather?

Thanks,
-Kim