What you don't want to wake up and see in your chicken pen!

[D'Angelo N Va.]

Quote:
How did you read my mind? lol I am dying to know the answers too......

 

[MaransMomma]

Wow! Walk away for a minute and 20 people are on here. LOL

Unfortunately-I lost my Bantam Roo that day.
I lost the hen just 3 days prior when they were free ranging. Dang hawk did it right in front of me!!! The pen was between me and it, should have been carrying my gun with me but I was in the process of putting them all back in. All I could do was scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! and it flew off with her!

There are NO MORE unsupervised free ranges allowed! I go with them,along with our border collie. She is a great protector for sure! She is the reason we knew this one was in the pen. She was barking like crazy until we finally went to see what it was all about. Mind you though- we didn't wait much past a couple of minutes to go and check. I was really concerned for her as well afraid those sharp claws would get at her eyes. Oh my!

It got in from a piece of chicken wire on the top that had come undone from the post. It wasn't secured as it should have been and I guess it thought it could get in, but didn't figure how to get out. It seems to be a young hawk, not quite as experienced with escape plans I am sure.

Now we have have every daggone type of hawk circling around even landing on their pen!

But we also have Sparkle (the border collie) and some ammo. lol

I am confident they are safer now though. Never 100%

 

[desertdarlene]

Wow! That's too bad about your roo.

 

[terrilhb]

I am so sorry for the loss of your roo.

 

[MaransMomma]

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I do have 2x4 but it got in through the chicken wire that covers the top. Not sure what kind of hawk, but today we had to huge redtail hawks scouting it out. UGGGH!

I didn't kill the hawk, but it was a very long debate if I would or not. I actually opened the door to chase it out. It was pretty scared and winded from all the excitement of being barked at by Sparkle.

 

[Xtina]

Holy cow!

 

[greekbioguy]

that would freak me out . it is a gorgeous bird though but at the wrong place . i think the loops in your wire mess are enormous . i would not use wire mess with loops larger than a centimeter and you need that all around your pen and definatelly on the top. falcons do atempt to dive and catch my mandarins and wood ducks but they bounche on the chicken wire ( i think only young ones dont know what chicken wire is) i have taken 2 of them to a wildlife hospital over the last 5 years with broken wings and legs and i had one kiled on the wire. so you need to do a bit of work and then you will be sure you will never see this in your pen again

 

[TheSpiceGirls]

I'm going to say it's a Cooper's Hawk. But these are really challening to tell apart from the Sharp-shinned Hawks. Great description w/ photos of the differences here:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/AboutBirdsandFeeding/accipiterIDtable.htm

Either way, they could both go after a chicken. And once they know where there's chicken on the menu, they will stalk that area and bring friends. So once you've had an encounter with a hawk, it's important to really step up the security until they figure out that they can't get to them and move on.