Lost our first chicken.

[Omegaman]

This afternoon while I was making lunch I heard the chickens go nuts. I ran down intime to see the huge hawk trying to take my chicken over the fence. I had him stone cold and would have loved nothing more then to hit him with black cloud but he is protected under MBTA. So long story short if you have chicken you will lose some. Our chickens free range during the day. The one that got killed had walked into the dog kennel to eat dog food.

[dalewick]

Sorry to hear of your loss. Don't know if your interested or not but if your area is small enough you can always run lines (50# mono) across your area about 12 feet off the ground and spread 10 feet apart. Hawks, gulls and most larger birds won't fly under it.

Dale

[RICHFL]

If you can find where the bird was perched while lo0oking over your chickens you can tie plastic store bags and they will stay away. That goes for any bird. The noise in the wind and the movement causes them to move on.

[imro]

If you can find where the bird was perched while lo0oking over your chickens you can tie plastic store bags and they will stay away. That goes for any bird. The noise in the wind and the movement causes them to move on.

Try to put something shiny up on a stick.Iuse chrome plated shiny ball .That scares hawks away.It is working for years for me.
Imro

[Omegaman]

because we let the free range we are always going to loose birds . I am going to try hanging some CDs in some of the trees. When I build the new coop it will have a covered run.

[ZAGran]

A covered run is your best bet. Raised chickens for 15 years, started out completely free range and wound up with 2 out of 24 after the first year. Covered run worked the best. Because we have 20 acres we could change the run every year or so (rotated 3) so I guess we had semi free range chickens. Without rotation the run will soon become nothing but a packed, bare dirt, food-less strip. If left to long, run will take more than a year to recover.
The small yard the runs went off took 6 years to recover after we moved the coop.
We made our runs 5 feet wide plus 1 linear foot for each chicken (25). The run's soil was worked lightly and seeded with a perennial rye grass (to prevent weeds) when we moved to the next run. Wound up doing 1 year on 2 years off.
We never did find a way to make a mobile run that would keep the 4 legged predators out so ours were permanent . Maybe someone could address that.

[jezcruzen]

I have 15 chickens, including one rooster, that we free range during the day. We put them up at dusk. They have a hen house that opens to a covered run.

Over the past summer, we lost eight young birds - all from one hatching (had 14 hatch) to hawks. While quail-size, a smaller Sharp Shinned hawk began taking one each morning. He took seven before he had an accident. Once about grouse-size, a Red tail helped himself to the only rooster in the group. He was so bold as to begin dining on the bird right in the yard. Surprisingly, the hawk felt so bad about what he had done that he committed suicide.

Free ranging your birds will guarantee that you will loose some. Its just an accepted part of free ranging chickens. I find that the lack of parasitic ticks due to the chickens eating them, and the improved taste of the free ranged eggs are worth it.

[Chefsimms]

I have a lot of good luck with hanging the CDs by the gardens, it seems to keep the birds and rabbits away…But I think our cats and dogs do the best job. Sorry about your chicken.