Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: upstatenybowyer on October 30, 2018, 05:41:04 pm
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Well, I should have known. I built a pretty solid and spacious run outside my coop for the girls, but failed to make it completely hawk-proof. O:)
At around 3:00 pm today Melissa heard a racket coming from out back (she was home w/ my sick son). She went out and a MASSIVE red-tail hawk had one of my girls pinned down and was getting ready for the kill. :o
Luckily, Melissa ran at the HUMONGOUS bird of prey yelling loud enough to cause it to flee. She then secured the ladies in the coop. The girl was scared out of her tiny mind, but alive. :OK
When I got home around 4:00 I went out there and the GARGANTUAN predator was back, perched low in a tree right next to the coop.
I walked toward the hawk, and told it in my best "quit the horsing around" teacher-voice to vacate the premises or else! That thing just sat there staring at me as if to say, "Where's my dinner?"
It finally flew away when I got close enough. :D
What should I learn from all of this?
A) Melissa is scarier than me
B) I'm a terrible chicken owner for not properly "hawk-proofing" the run
C) Please feel free to tell me what you think I should learn :D
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D) Time to make some hawk arrows? (Not sure about legalities there...)
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Yeah, I thought of that Tim, but I live in NY and they've got a law for everything here. I could check, but I'd bet dollars to donuts it ain't legal.
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While your protecting them from hawks. You might want to make sure the mink, Fox and coyotes can't get em either. Mink can be hard to keep out. I've helped several chicken owners catch mink that kept killing their chickens.
Bjrogg
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Before birds of prey became protected by the government folks
around here used to trap and shoot them :-M
The chickens fed their families. They would put traps on fence posts
and even on top of the telephone poles.
Zuma
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Don, doesn't chicken and hawk taste the same. just one takes longer cooking time than the other? :o :-X
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You guys are terrible, you'll have JW pulling his hair out ;D.
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Outback is right! It ain't illegal if you eat the evidence. ;D
Steve
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Don, doesn't chicken and hawk taste the same. just one takes longer cooking time than the other? :o :-X
One ole farmer told me they taste like cat. -C-
Zuma
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The one mental "chicken drama" I will never get out of my head
is the image of Fran's doberman, chasing a fox chasing a chicken. ;D
Oh and his wife chasing the dog ;D ;D >:D
Zuma
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That's hilarious Zuma. Would've loved to see that. ;D
J.W., for the record, I love birds, and have never eaten one I didn't raise myself or buy at the store! O:) (Although I would love to take a turkey one day w/ a selfbow (SH) :G)
Please share your own chicken drama here. Somebody's gotta have something!
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Last winter we had a terrible time with it. Our flock has long since learned to use the ample available cover in the yard to stay safe from the red tailed hawks, but (no lie) last winter a Sharp Shinned Hawk started taking them out. No, really, and full sized chickens, not banties. Got our rooster, which was just as well since he was old anyway and we have houses going in where there used to be woods behind us and I wasn't sure how a rooster was going to work with that. Also got 4 hens! Little guy could go right into the thick stuff with them and once he got them by the neck, it was over. I eventually negotiated a settlement with him.
Hawks are protected at both the state and federal level by very strict laws. Technically, if one is in the process of killing one of your birds, you have a legal right to defend your property, but the judge may or may not agree.
The old country way is the 3 S Method: Shoot, shovel and shut up!
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There is reason why the redtail is often called the chickenhawk. Can't really blame 'em, I like chicken, too. Well, maybe not as rare as they prefer.
I am betting your chickens are a little "hawk smarter" now. But yeah, you really don't wanna get caught killing one. The fines are never gentle on the budget.
As for fletching...I have a set of eagle fletched arrows on the way. ;D Granted, the feathers started as white turkey feathers, but the maker is an artist at faking eagle feathers out of them.
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Thanks for sharing your experience HP. I'm still somewhat of a newbie when it comes to owning chickens. We had no trouble with the hawks all summer, but the colder weather must be making them hungry and more bold.
I'm starting to wonder if this was a redtail JW. It was just too big. What else could it have been in NY though? Osprey maybe? :-\
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I used to have chickens, and everything likes their flavor. I'll just tell you about a couple of my experiences with them.
One day I was out mowing the grass with a push mower, and a mother hen and her little fuzzy yellow babies were within ten feet of me when a big red-tailed fell like a rock out of the sky and popped it's wings open about shoulder high, snagged a baby and was out of sight in the woods in less than 5 seconds. The scene went from peace and tranquility to distress and a dead baby within a second. I was shocked that the hawk had no apparent fear of me.
Something I saw with hawks, coyotes, and owls is that once they pick out their target, they do not see anything else. You can walk out in front of them and wave your arms, but you might as well not be there. I almost hit a hawk one day while driving down the highway. The hawk swooped across the road right in front of me at about 2-3 feet above the ground at high speed. It did a quick "hop" maneuver over the roadside vine-covered fence and came up with a bird from the other side of the fence.
Most of the time when a hen had babies, I would keep her and the babies under a cage/pen with 1" chicken wire on the top and sides. Each day I would drag it to a new clean spot of grass for them to eat. The cages/pens were pretty heavy. One day I heard the very loud screaming of a red tailed hawk, and when I looked out the back door, I saw a hawk hanging on the side of that cage screaming and snatching on the wire with it's claws. After a moment of total frustration, it flew into the woods nearby. I checked the hen and all seemed to be well. None of them died of fright.
WA
Edit: Once a predator of any kind gets a taste of chicken, it will count on getting dinner there every day till the last chicken is gone. When I got chickens, predators came from everywhere. Owls were the worst. I called a game warden to discuss how to solve the problem. He told me very bluntly that if I wanted to keep chickens, I would have to pen them up, because I could not do anything to "HIS" owls. Then he staked me out for a solid month watching every night for me to do something to his owls, but I had not just fallen off a turnip truck. Eventually it became just too much work and aggravation to keep them confined and predators and neighbors' dogs finished them off. One of the last things that happened was that a huge rattlesnake came in through the rusted tin at the bottom of my chicken house and killed a pile of half-grown chickens. It ate five (yes, I always had a count on them) of them and left the others lying there. You think I am lying, but I later found a rattlesnake big enough to do that within 50 feet of where that chicken house had been.
In Texas state and federal laws make it high risk to harm any predatory bird of any kind.
Edit: I know that a snake did that because of the slithering track it left in the sand.
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In the fall this years young hawks are moving around and learning the ropes. Chickens are easy.
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he he >:D
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Could be an osprey, but that would be extremely weird. 98% of osprey diet is fish, the rest is a rare snake taken off the water or a stray duckling off the water. Osprey seem to turn off all hunting instinct over land, they won't even pick up a fish flopping on the ground as easy a pickings at that would be.
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I know that first year eagles have longer flight feathers by about an inch. Makes them look quite a bit bigger. I don't know if all birds of prey are like that. JW?
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I've been doing some research on the BOP in this area and I'm 99% certain I've identified the beast...
Northern Goshawk. Melissa and I both got a good look at her (females are significantly bigger) and we both agree it must be what we saw. They are known for taking chickens, the size is a match and the coloration fits perfectly. What'ya think JW?
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I had one of those when I was into falconry a long time ago. I actually caught it in the field beside where I live now. It was taking the neighbours chickens :D. I had her eating off the glove and the telephone company sent me out of town for 4 weeks. I turned her loose. Beautiful bird. Design perfection. They're like cougars, lots of them around but you never see them.
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Upstate,
We do have Northern Goshawks in the Western New York area, I was dive bombed by one once that had a nest near a trail I was using, also on a side note Bald Eagles are becoming some what common in our area, and there are nesting ospreys along the Niagara river and in the Kinzua area.
Kevin
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Once upon a time, we had a neighbor who was a ag teacher. She had chickens, rabbits peacocks and other assorted critters. They were good neighbors but their animals sometimes escaped and the chickens usually ran around my yard more than theirs. Come to think of it the peacocks never went to their yard and loved to roost on my tractors. "I'm not huge fan of peacocks ". Anyway they moved away and long after they were gone their critters still remained. There was one chicken in perticular I remember. He was beautiful and very fast. I had a small woodlot behind my house and lots of other trees in my yard. Whenever he felt threatened he was almost instantly in the thick stuff. I gained a bit of respect for him, having eluded the many predators I knew were after him. One day there was a snow owl on my electric pole by the road. The next morning a pile of scattered feathers was all that remained. I kinda miss him.
Bjrogg
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BJ, that's sad man! :'( I never thought I'd have much affection for these chickens, but seeing that girl traumatized like she was after the attack, my heart went out to her.
DC, thanks for confirming my suspicions about the goshawk. Asking questions on PA never disappoints. With so many folks w/ so much knowledge and experience, you can't go wrong. :)
Thanks Kevin. 8)
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It's all part of nature and life in general. Living on a farm all my life I've experienced plenty of death of my animals. I've come to except it. Doesn't mean I like it our am not effected by it. Just means I except it. Some people think we don't care about our animals. Nothing could be further from the truth. We spend more time talking care of our animals than our family's. They usually live in newer barns than our houses to.
Bjrogg
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I've been doing some research on the BOP in this area and I'm 99% certain I've identified the beast...
Northern Goshawk. Melissa and I both got a good look at her (females are significantly bigger) and we both agree it must be what we saw. They are known for taking chickens, the size is a match and the coloration fits perfectly. What'ya think JW?
That is a beautiful bird. I would raise chickens just to watch it come and take them--and buy my buffalo wings at the store.
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My area is loaded with chicken houses. On my way to town a truck loaded with
chickens was speeding past me in the opposite direction knocking down tree
branches as it swerved, narrowly missing me. About an hour later I came back
down the road and saw a very unusual site. It looked like it had snowed in
one spot off the right side of the road. Then it dawned on me. It was a ton of
chickens perched on a driveshaft and tires of the overturned chicken truck.
Local farmers fed off them for a month. So did the owls.
Zuma
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It's gotta be tough being a chicken... you're just so tasty, and everyone wants a piece of you! -C-
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I'll take a breast and a thigh.lol
Bjrogg
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Edit: Once a predator of any kind gets a taste of chicken, it will count on getting dinner there every day till the last chicken is gone. When I got chickens, predators came from everywhere. Owls were the worst. I called a game warden to discuss how to solve the problem. He told me very bluntly that if I wanted to keep chickens, I would have to pen them up, because I could not do anything to "HIS" owls. Then he staked me out for a solid month watching every night for me to do something to his owls, but I had not just fallen off a turnip truck. Eventually it became just too much work and aggravation to keep them confined and predators and neighbors' dogs finished them off. One of the last things that happened was that a huge rattlesnake came in through the rusted tin at the bottom of my chicken house and killed a pile of half-grown chickens. It ate five (yes, I always had a count on them) of them and left the others lying there. You think I am lying, but I later found a rattlesnake big enough to do that within 50 feet of where that chicken house had been.
In Texas state and federal laws make it high risk to harm any predatory bird of any kind.
Edit: I know that a snake did that because of the slithering track it left in the sand.
That is one heck of a story man! I would have had a hard time not going after a snake that size, especially if it ate my chickens! Just think of the backings you could get!
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My dad kept Chickens when I was young. One night I got up, for some reason, and went outside for a minute. I could hear a raucous going on at the coup so I grabbed my .22, I think I had a Browning lever at the time, a flashlight and went to see. When I got there I saw that a slaughter had been going on. There were pieces of Chickens lying all over the place. Some of them had legs torn off, some disemboweled and others just lying there dead. I shone the light around and saw a rather large Skunk in one corner munching away on another Chicken. I filled it full of lead. That was the end of that Skunk but not the end on my dad's troubles with his Chickens.
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We keep around a dozen chickens here.I made a 50' long 8' wide wire covered run for them.We've been predator free.They go into wood floored shed which the door gets shut every evening and opened every morning.
We've got chicken hawks here but no gos hawks.Sparrow hawks and occasional eagle too.One more type of hawk mid sized I'm not sure of.It has a lot of white and black on it's longer tail.Couple different type owls.Great horned and barred.Otters,mink,coyotes,fox,skunk and coon will get our chickens too.There are badgers too but not that many.
I did have to shoot a skunk myself the other day that was in with the cats.More than likely an opposum will get shot sometime this winter too.I hung the skunk up in a tree to air out.No turkey vultures around this time of year.It's rather cold here at this time and hopefully I'll skin him out later and make something out of him.
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Wow Marc, as I was reading your reply I was expecting coyote, weasel, fox, or maybe even bear, but skunk... :o I always knew they were ruthless, but wouldn't have thought they were capable of something like that. (A)
Ed, I'm thinking I'll do something similar to the run you described when the ground thaws in the spring. How high is the "ceiling"?
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Only around 4 to 4.5 feet Jeff.Plain old chicken wire is enough to deter those hawks.I used thin walled galvanized pipe layed across the width of the run to help hold the chicken wire up better.I'll get a pic.I'm sure there are better ways but this worked for me.We bought posts and wire at farm sales cheaper for the task.
(https://i.imgur.com/EDo2tFd.jpg)
The center run is for the chickens.Run on the right is for Robins' minature pony and a nanny goat and goes out into a small pasture.Run on the left is for her pair of pot bellied pigs.Built the shed too some time ago.
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Wow Marc, as I was reading your reply I was expecting coyote, weasel, fox, or maybe even bear, but skunk... :o I always knew they were ruthless, but wouldn't have thought they were capable of something like that. (A)
Ed, I'm thinking I'll do something similar to the run you described when the ground thaws in the spring. How high is the "ceiling"?
Just to clarify. The Chickens the Skunk was ripping apart were not adults, more like half grown. Some of them were still alive even though they had legs missing. I don't know if it could have done the same damage to an adult bird
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Thanks for the pic Ed, that's really helpful actually. I've been trying to visualize what I'm gonna do and now I've got a frame of reference. Good thinkin with the bars across the top. :OK
That makes a bit more sense Marc. Still, I would not have expected a skunk to do something like that. How old were you at the time? Mustn't have been an easy thing to witness as a boy. Sounds like you took care of business though! :-M
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Chickens are nice to have around.Excess eggs for the 2 of us are sold or traded away.Many neighbors have them also.Some do let them run all over the yard but eventually 1 by 1 something will get them out here.Same goes for ducks and geese but we don't have any of those.It's why the small door they go in and out of gets shut every evening,and then opened every morning.With a 3/4" thick treated plywood floor nothing can dig for them either.
The little animal I fear the most is the mink killing the chickens with our creeks around here as they do not hibernate.