Will guineas or geese help?

One option you may have is a good guard dog. They won't help much against hawks since hawks will ambush a chicken from the air, but they will help with the other preditors. I've only lost young chickens to hawks though. Ones that they could carry off. I've had chickens for years and the only time I had any problems with coyotes was last fall when my husband took her to hunting camp. Coons, possums, etc. don't stand a chance cause the dog keeps them away. However, if the chickens roam too far out in the woods they are fair game. This year I'm getting some guineas primarily for bug control, but it they can help keep the rest of the flock safe as well, all the better.
 
On the topic of hawks, someone I know had a hawk swoop down right in front of their eyes and killed two chickens on the spot, and ripped the beak off a third. In my area people have had a lot of trouble with hawks, so our run is covered on top. We've had a lot of predators in the past, the worst was a weasel which could squeeze in small spaces and killed an entire flock. He tried to come back for the others.. he is now stuffed on our shelf :) Our philosophy with predators is to do the best you can. We have a large run for each coop, totally enclosed, with the chicken wire going down under the ground.
 
I don't know why I never thought of a hawk killing a larger chicken and eating it right there. When I think of hawks I picture them swooping down, catching prey and taking off with it. We have a lot of wild birds in our yard (we don't feed them or incourage them to be here, I know it's not ideal for the chickens health, but we have a number of pecan trees and water our yard often so they like it here). Having chickens is stressful!
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One of our dogs took out half of our one month old flock a couple of days ago so I don't trust him not to team up with the hawks and make a party out of it!
 
I use dogs to keep my flocks safe.
Here they are chasing off a herin that tried to land in their territory, sorry it's blurry i was early in the morning and kinda foggy
 

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