Un-hijacking the hijacked.. A continued wayward discussion..

[Davaroo]

I like the idea of crow feeding, but dont think it lay out eggs for them. And Id probably put the bait down the road aways.

 

[Kentucky]

Davaroo:

Now, is that down the road or down on the road, thus bait becomes a trap. Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.

Kentucky

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
Clever. No thats on off from the house, so as to keep tham settled at some distance - as much as that is possible.
They are there to keep after the hawks, not get too comfy.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
I played with the idea of tying out an extra quail or two, just to hawk-watch. Then I remembered I had free-ranging chickens and thought it would probably be better not to condition the hawks any further to taking bait from the backyard.

Maybe at a different location, for some good photo ops, but not out on the chickens range.

-Kim

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
Hah! The new way to "eliminate" hawks and other unwanted airborne predators. Place bait in the road, sit back with something to drink and wait for cars. Too bad you would mostly get the scavengers, vultures and crows.

Me, personally, I enjoy watching the raptors too much to break the law to harm them. I think they are one of the most beautiful predators, them and the wolves. Wolves don't seem to be too much of a problem with poultry though. Just me.

-Kim

 

[Davaroo]

Kim,
It's sort of like planting extra in your garden for the chckens. In this case, keep enough extra chickens to feed the hawks.
When they "don't come home," as you say, simply shrug and say "Well, I did my part."
Kind of a cool viewpoint, really. Avoids a lot of stressing out over them.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
LOL Train the hawks to go after the big white Coturnix quail tethered out in the middle of the field instead of the big flock of chickens. I like it, but I think it invites too much trouble.

I'm not going to pretend all my birds are going to come home. It only leads to a lot of stress. They are prey animals and I accept that readily. I do not let birds I cannot part with out of the coop. So all those precious breeding birds stay penned up, unless I am escorting them.

-Kim

 

[wegotchickens]

Quote:
Start feeding the hawks and owls?

-Kim

Saw a sparrow hawk the other day as he flew over me and my birds. Glad we do supervised free-ranging

He was too small for the hens, but my 4 week olds probably looked tasty.

After 2 fly-by's I realized I haven't heard the crows in a few days.

Keeping my fingers crossed, as we had a pair of red-tailed hawks that flew in our area pretty frequently until the crow gang showed up. Hopefully they've moved into some poor farmers corn fields and the hawks will be back.

 

[bluey]

I've got a gang of crows here and they seem to be keeping larger predators away. They are annoying and affect my songbird feeding somewhat, but they seem to be happy grabbing some chicken feed until my alpha hen runs them off (she charges them like a rhino). The chickens and hawks seem to co-exist fine.

I would very much disagree with any idea that involves feeding hawks or giving the crows eggs. A little chicken feed is one thing...

Although feeding a large raptor a bird to be culled would be something to see....

 

[dacjohns]

I'm raising chickens and letting them run around just so the hawks have something to eat.