If you had told me two years ago I would spend an inordinate amount of time scouring the internet, buying every book I could find on the shelf and participating in online chicken forums (I know….lame) to find out what is killing my chickens, I would’ve said you’re nuts. I mean, as my daughter said, “Mom, they’re just chickens.”
I get it. They’re not complex animals. In fact, there are rocks smarter than your average chicken. But they don’t deserve a brutal death, in my opinion. Unless, of course, you’re serving them up for Sunday dinner after church. Then it’s totally acceptable to lop off their heads, soak them up in buttermilk, dust them in flour and paprika and drop them in a frying pan. Yum. Sorry, lost my train of thought….I was dreaming of fried chicken.
So we started with the monster raccoon and the deaths of my first three chickens. Next, I had an Americauna that came down with some sort of illness. Her eyes were oozing and she smelled rancid. Ick. It was pretty gross. That’s my very technical diagnosis. We treated her and the rest of the flock with antibiotics. None of the others got sick, and she was recovering nicely, when my friendly neighborhood owl swooped down and made brunch of her.
I ordered three baby chicks (and received five…but that’s a whole different story for another day) to replenish my flock. They were living in the garage in an old blue tub when one day, my dog, Sallie, tried to eat one. I went to check on them after I heard a commotion in the garage, and they were scattered to high Heaven. I found my little black and white chick bleeding around her neck.
But don’t worry, I applied chicken first aid. I cleaned the wound, applied antibiotic ointment and wrapped a bandage around her neck. She loved that. It stayed in place approximately two seconds before she managed to get it off. It was pretty amusing to watch. In fact, I’m certain she sustained more injuries from throwing herself against the sides of the blue tub to get the bandage off than she did from the neck wound. I will say this: she lived to lay eggs and is now perfectly healthy. Therefore, my first aid must’ve done some good.
Our flock had finally made it up to nine birds (four of them laying), which felt like a huge success to me. We were still free ranging them during the day, and then locking then up at night. I walked down one afternoon to check on the ladies, and it struck me that it was eerily quiet. When I got to the coop, only one chicken was inside. I started searching frantically for the other birds, with no luck. Finally, I stumbled on the bad thing. One of my beautiful Black Australorp hens (my most prolific layer) was a goner, killed by a hawk.
We were eventually able to find the other birds, but they were not happy campers. It took DAYS to get more eggs. Stressed out chickens do not make eggs.
I now strongly dislike (my daughters won’t let me use the word “hate”) hawks….and owls….and raccoons. While free ranging chickens sounds great in concept, it has been pretty difficult for me. If there are any flying daytime predators or wandering neighborhood dogs, you might as well count on losing one of two girls pretty regularly. Which brings me to the worst predator of all: the unknown kind.
I constantly monitor the coop to try and avoid a sneak attack. I’m always tracking footprints, watching for dig marks around the coop and looking for bent wires in the coop walls. You might say I’m a little on the paranoid side. I should’ve been a detective. Except I’m terrible at detecting.
One night I decided we needed to do a chicken check. I had forgotten to do it before it got dark outside, and I really like to make sure everything’s secure before I go to bed. My husband offered but being the trooper (or martyr) I am, I insisted I would be fine. He told me to grab my flashlight and my gun, just in case something was waiting for me. That did nothing to ease my vivid imagination.
I had my gun in one hand and flashlight in the other as I stepped out toward the chicken coop, which sits about 50 yards from our house, in the pitch black darkness. I had made it approximately 5 feet from the driveway when something, and I mean something BIG, spun in the dirt and took off in the opposite direction of me. Like a bolt.
I did what every brave and armed person should do. I screamed like a girl, turned around and ran back in the house, flashlight dropped on ground and gun waving in the air. I ran all the way into the garage, through the house, to the bedroom, where my husband was sitting calmly in our bed.
“Everything ok?” he asked me.
“IT TRIED TO KILL ME!!!” I screamed back, gun still above my head.
I will never know what was in the yard with me that night, stalking my chickens. My husband says it was a deer. Whatever. I’m pretty sure a deer wouldn’t try to kill me.
So that’s my personal synopsis of chicken predators. They are bad news, and there are many of them: neighborhood dogs, raccoons, owls, hawks and occasionally a coyote or fox. Complete protection isn’t possible. There are lots of deterrents but many predators are wily and eventually find a way if they need food. I’ve come to peace with that.
However, I’m not fully at peace with the creature in my backyard that was after ME. I mean, are we really sure there’s no such thing as Sasquatch? Maybe he (or she) likes chicken? All I know is…if I ever find a gigantic footprint in my backyard, I’m considering a move to a really big city…..
Hugs and blessings always,
LITTLE JEN in the BIG WOODS
