way to keep hawks out temporaly* Please don't read if you protect hawk

[FF]

WOW GUYS! Never expected to come home tonight and find almost 80 posts haha. i have red a little bit of everyones post. thanks a whoile lot for the open discussion. i am going to explain things that i have seen in the other posts. i don't want nobody to get mad at me.

1. Yes hawks have killed housepets. My neighbor had a puppy. Little bity thing. We live kind of close but we have space on the backs of our houses and we loive right next to the woods. well little to say bam there wasn't really nothing to do but to not let her dogs out without watching them. i believe he was sitting on the dead tree behind her house. i've seen the hawk set there. i am guessing that was the one. i guess it got a glemse of it and you know.

2. YES I BELIVE HAWK POPULATIONS HAVE BECOME WAY OVER CONTROL. we used to have "pet" rabbits we used to feed. they were wild but after a few weeks of throwing lettuce and cabbage out they started to come. This was maybe half-1 year ago. And they had little ones raising them in our field. little by little the babies grew up and low and behold the hawks one by one picking and choosing. the adults still came until one day it was(HAWK) was sitting on the light pole and started picking off all my "pet" rabbits. i tryed everything. one of the babies my brother found in the yard and i am guessing it was the kid of the eaten parents. So we let him go. he wasn't as tame but came back for lettuce. this was recently too. Knock on wood the hawks have left him alone. my mom named him max and he comes around sometimes. not really much feeding to do though.

3. The other wild life our literally starving. As above the rabbits poulation is way down. I have the max rabbit and literally 3 others that nest under a small building my neighbor has. Thats it. we have a fox that rolls around here at night . very pretty. would not harm him in any way. I know he would kill my chickens but he has never tryed. i have a huge fence on my lot besides my chickens. He is really skinny and the fox population has went down bad.

4. CHANGE THE LAWS.

 

[haTHOR]

any thoughts on any of the suggestions? which ones would work for you? this would be good to think about as you move through the permit process, as one of the requirements is to clarify in writing on the application itself what non-lethal means you have tried and will continue to try, i noticed.

 

[magsrags]

Quote:
OK, do I understand right that the crows will ward off the hawks???? I have plenty of crows to attract in the area...and a couple of hawks with plenty of protected woodland/fields to otherwise peruse.

Corn....................so simple to supply.:<0
thank you!

 

[FF]

Quote:
hello. Yes i have tryed netting and they busted through it. Tryed harrasing, blow horn, shooting in mid airyou basically think it i've done. Cds I have done. It worked with the biggest hawk but another smaller one came. And it kept the black birds away. Chickens idn't like it too much either

 

[FF]

Oh and thank you all very much for this discussion. And Moderators please don't be mad at me for this post. But I am sick of this stuff. I basically alreday got denied the Application. So...

 

[muell112]

Quote:
Maybe you could try this idea? I have actually been thinking about doing this also, or some modification of it. It sounds like a cheap and easy way to let your chickens avoid the hawk. Good think about a hawk is that once it's on the ground it's not going to be a very effective predator against your birds - its advantage lies in flying down and using its talons. Once your birds are under the shelter they're safe and if the hawk lands they can run...

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
Do you know how to read? Don't take something that I say out of context and make a smart alec remark like that.

Chill, Saying that makes you no better than bear. ...

Wrong! Your saying THAT makes YOU no better than bear.

 

[haTHOR]

ree "pet" wild rabbits you tamed...that were then eaten by a hawk.

this is a lot like chickens. we've taken a breed that used to have some wild instincts/defensive mechanisms, and selectively bred them for our desires--give eggs, be pets, for example--but also lowered their ability to survive in the natural world.

i know this is hard to hear, because you valued your "pet" wild rabbits and the experience you and your family had with them...but it's a good example of how messing with wild animals can expose them to greater risk. they might not have exposed themselves to that risk (being out in the open, for example) if they hadn't been acclimated to that being a safe area due to the feedings you were providing.

similarly, chickens have lost their survival skills due to them conforming to our wishes via selective breeding. unlike your "pet" rabbits, we take greater responsibility for our true pets, providing them with a home that makes up for what they lose--natural survivability--from being tamed by us.

blaming a hawk for taking a fast and easy meal--rabbit or chicken, meat feeds their babies just like chickens and eggs feed ours--is never going to solve your issue. and as a very astute previous poster pointed out, shooting one, legally or illegally, will simply invite another to take over that territory. like it or not, we do share space with predators, and have to make our chickens not seem like easy pickings.

i look forward to hearing about how you handle this challenge! i am sure you will be a valuable resource to others who will face this issue in the future, since hawks aren't going anywhere.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
That would not necessarily be true if there were not an overabundance of hawks brought about by responsible people controlling their population. Also, someone else said DNR personnel have knowlege, etc. Actually, DNR personnel keep their jobs by trying to uphold the law as it IS, not by changing the law. It is not part of their job to write laws.

 

[speckledhen]

After reports, I believe we're done here. Thanks for your participation.