Chickens and predators:
No doubt about it, your backyard chickens depend on you for health, housing, and safety. In return, they will supply you with eggs, entertainment, pest control, fertilizer, meat, and more. But as prey animals, chickens are also the subject of great interest to everything from domestic dogs to snakes, rats, owls, and hawks. You should expect to lose a bird to predation occasionally, but these tips will go far to help keep your flock safe.
- Husbandry is one of the first steps you should take to reduce predation, and includes: a) Keeping the grounds around your chicken coops clean, b) Removing yard debris, trash, and construction waste, which provides cover and housing for rats, c) Eliminate food sources that will draw nighttime visitors, d) Clean under bird feeders and, e) Keep chicken housing and runs away from the edges of woodlands and riparian areas.
- Train your birds to return to the chicken house every evening and keep it locked at night. If you raise your chicks in that coop, they will naturally return to lay eggs and roost at night after you let them range for the day.
- Raise the chicken coop off the ground by a foot or so to discourage rats, skunks, and snakes from taking up residence beneath it and stealing eggs, chicks, or young hens. Keep the henhouse floor tight and patch any holes that snakes and rats can get through.
- Enclose the coop in a secure poultry run to discourage dogs, coyotes, bobcats, and other carnivores from gaining access to your flock. You can choose poultry wire, welded-wire mesh, electric netting, or other fencing materials with sufficiently small openings (or sufficiently high-voltage electrical pulses) to keep your birds in and predators out. Bobcats and coyotes are fantastic jumpers and can easily clear 4-foot-high fences, so build your enclosure appropriately tall, or add a cover net.
- Cover the chicken run with welded-wire fencing, chicken wire, or game-bird netting, or install a random array of crisscrossing wires overhead to discourage hawks and owls. If you shut your chickens in the coop at night, owl attacks will not be an issue. But hungry owls may grab their meal right at dusk, or slightly beforehand, so if owls are a problem in your area, don’t wait until after dark to close up the coop.
- Bury galvanized hardware cloth or other welded-wire fencing around the perimeter of the chicken run if you have problems with predators digging beneath your surface fencing.
- Provide a night light (motion-sensor-activated) that will flood the chicken run with light after dark or install a set of Nite Guard Solar predator-deterrent lights.
- Choose small-mesh fencing materials for enclosing coops and runs when raccoons and members of the mink or fisher family are among the predators. This is especially important when you keep your chickens in a fully enclosed wire coop/run. Although 2-by-3-inch welded-wire fencing is less expensive, you will lose fewer birds if you use 1-by-2-inch mesh or smaller welded wire.
- Chicken-friendly dogs that don’t chase chickens may be left in chicken yards at night or during the day to deter predators.
- Prepare yourself to take swift action when you discover predation. You can take measures to eliminate the predator or to eliminate its access to your birds.
- Create a predator-danger zone around the coop and chicken yard. Most terrestrial predators are uncomfortable crossing an area with minimal cover. Plant bushes inside the chicken run – your birds will love the shade and nibbling on the leaves – but leave the perimeter as cover-free as you can. Raccoons are less likely to try to work their “hands” into a welded-wire enclosure when they have to sit in the open to do it.