Polish Hens
In the Brooder
- Jul 7, 2023
- 2
- 2
- 11
Hi all, nice to meet you!
We've been raising chicks on and off for a couple of years now. The most we had at once was about 30 birds, and at a point all we had was one old rooster. Now we have 13 adult birds - Polish mixed with plain old chickens of unknown descent - and (until yesterday) four baby chics. In the past we had our birds in a smaller enclosure in our backyard, and even though our neighbors have a lot of cats, and those come into our yard, it seemed the cats had no interest in our birds and vice versa. Two months ago we decided to let our birds roam in the bigger yard and only come into a small shed at night. They enter the shed when it gets dark, and we only go over and close the doors. To cut a long story short, one of the baby chicks went missing between yesterday evening and today. Cats cannot enter the shed, so there are two options: either the little one was attacked by someone when roaming close to his mother yesterday (they still follow her everywhere at all times), or it somehow didn’t enter the shed, stayed alone at night and was then attacked while on its own.
From your experience, will cats dare attack chicks that are in close proximity to their mother? It seems they won’t touch adult birds, so I thought they won’t try to get the babies.
Secondly, if we decide to move the mother and the babies to the smaller enclosure, what size or weight should the birds reach before we can let them roam with the others? I really don’t want to lose any more chicks (or, in a while, pullets). We have pretty high fences, but the cats seem not to mind that. I must admit to being pretty upset by this incident.
P. S. Cannot know for sure it was a cat, but we don’t have other predators around, and dogs cannot enter the yard. We found no signs of an eaten bird, but then it was still tiny.
We've been raising chicks on and off for a couple of years now. The most we had at once was about 30 birds, and at a point all we had was one old rooster. Now we have 13 adult birds - Polish mixed with plain old chickens of unknown descent - and (until yesterday) four baby chics. In the past we had our birds in a smaller enclosure in our backyard, and even though our neighbors have a lot of cats, and those come into our yard, it seemed the cats had no interest in our birds and vice versa. Two months ago we decided to let our birds roam in the bigger yard and only come into a small shed at night. They enter the shed when it gets dark, and we only go over and close the doors. To cut a long story short, one of the baby chicks went missing between yesterday evening and today. Cats cannot enter the shed, so there are two options: either the little one was attacked by someone when roaming close to his mother yesterday (they still follow her everywhere at all times), or it somehow didn’t enter the shed, stayed alone at night and was then attacked while on its own.
From your experience, will cats dare attack chicks that are in close proximity to their mother? It seems they won’t touch adult birds, so I thought they won’t try to get the babies.
Secondly, if we decide to move the mother and the babies to the smaller enclosure, what size or weight should the birds reach before we can let them roam with the others? I really don’t want to lose any more chicks (or, in a while, pullets). We have pretty high fences, but the cats seem not to mind that. I must admit to being pretty upset by this incident.
P. S. Cannot know for sure it was a cat, but we don’t have other predators around, and dogs cannot enter the yard. We found no signs of an eaten bird, but then it was still tiny.
