State of the Art Chicken Defense System

What do you think of the chicken’s new decorating scheme? Makes the place feel like a constant party. Unsurprisingly, the girls were not impressed. But no matter, the effort was to protect them, not impress them.

Last year when I allowed myself to be talked in to purchasing 28 chicks over the phone by a friendly, enthusiastic man at a hatchery in Iowa, I thought I was hedging my bets. After all, we lost eight chickens in one fox attack the year before and the dog had already nailed three by spring. So 28, while a ridiculous number of chicks for a family based operation, seemed reasonable when you consider the inherent dangers of living on this hillside.

All of the chicks, save one, made it through the summer. I was feeling flush; I even gave six away to friends whose own flocks had been decimated by age or sharp-toothed felons. I was in the midst of negotiating a deal to relocate another hen contingent on a rooster accompanying her (anyone else need a rooster?), when the siege began.

My husband and I were all cleaned up and headed out for a night on the town (or at least a game at the local brewery), when we heard panicked shrieking from the chicken pen. We dashed in our finery to the muddy pen and discovered a hawk having dispatched with one hen, surveying the others and choosing dessert. We shooed him out and hoped we’d scared him as much as he scared us.

Apparently not, because over the next few days chickens began to disappear on a daily basis. What to do? It’s illegal to shoot a hawk. They’re a protected species. I have a hard time understanding why we’re protecting them; they seem to do just fine on their own. No matter, we don’t own a gun. I did half-jokingly ask one of my son’s friends, an accomplished hunter, whether he’d be interested in the job. He wondered about the legalities of taking out the bird. Smart kid.

And it wasn’t just the hawk eyeing up our birds. We have a dog, which claims at least a small amount of hound pedigree, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That’s the nice way of saying it. She barks at the horses, as if she’s never seen them before, yet bounds out to greet any stranger who walks up our driveway. She threatens to kill the cat on a daily basis, only to back down the minute the cat turns around. She does not come when she is called and bursts through our invisible fence regularly, still not certain where that electric zap to the neck came from. Once free to roam, she rolls in horse poop and then sits opposite the front door barking. Obviously, the hawk is not afraid of her.

Back to my story. A few days after we realized we were losing birds, this dog began barking in an unfamiliar voice. My husband was working from home that day, and we looked at each other surprised. Was there a strange dog in our yard? No, it was our dear dumb hound, but she sounded different. She sounded like a real dog, as if she were saying, “I’m not kidding this time. There really is something dangerous in the yard!” Running outside we found a red fox stalking a cluster of chickens near the driveway. My husband pulled the invisible fence collar off our eager dog and set her off in chase. We knew she’d never harm a fox, but we were counting on the fox not knowing that. We set her up patrolling the yard. End of fox visits.

If only the hawk was as easily intimidated. Our free ranging girls are confined to their pen for the time being. They are none too happy about it and three of them are managing to scale the fence daily in deference to the fact that they have clipped wings and a local animal kingdom eyeing them up for lunch.

While the hens stewed, we considered our options.

At a holiday party, friends who live a few miles away told me that they were losing animals to coyote until they purchased donkeys. Apparently donkeys keep coyotes at bay. That seems like a cumbersome and expensive, not to mention noisy, fix, but they have cows to protect so there’s more at stake.

My husband and I recently spent a weekend on a sheep farm in Virginia where they had “guard llamas.” Guard llamas seems like an oxymoron until you learn how ferocious llamas can be. Who knew? 

We aren’t in the market for any more creatures, so we dreamed up our own defense. Hence the redecorating.

We’ve strung up electric fence across the top of the pen. It’s not electrified at this point. We’re starting out simple. I dug out old plastic containers and pie pans and strung them up with baling twine over the wires. I’m considering blasting some country music too, but don’t know how that will fly with the neighbors.

Have we outsmarted the hawk? It’s too soon to tell. We’re five days in to the new defense system and so far so good. I count beaks every morning.

This is our 'guard cat', not nearly as
effective as a llama would be I'm sure,
but he does protect the chickens from
the mice that would steal their food.

I tell this story, not for your entertainment, well maybe for your entertainment, but also as a reminder that sometimes we have to be creative when solving our own dilemmas. Whether it’s kids or chickens, it’s easy to throw money at a problem, in the form of llamas or donkeys or professionals. But it’s much more satisfying to fix the situation yourself. I’ll let you know how this one pans out.

Chicken Keeping, Anyone?

The babies are here! Last Monday at 7am, the post office called to say our chicks had arrived! My youngest son and I quickly scrambled and got out the door. As soon as we opened the door to the post office we could hear the peeping. The postal worker handed us a small box crammed with 28 baby chicks (see pic). They were only a day old.

Now, I certainly don’t need 28 chicks. We have 10 laying hens. We like to have about 18 hens – that’s the  magic number to provide us and our neighbor-customers with eggs, and still leaves a few left over to give as gifts. Several of our older hens are not laying so much and some weeks we barely have enough eggs for us. Still, we don’t need 28 chicks.

Problem is, when you order chicks through the mail, the minimum order is 25 chicks. I’m guessing this is the baseline of body mass to ensure survival. When you cram 25 newborn chicks into a shoebox, they keep each other warm. Two of the extras happened because of the lengthy e-chat I had with a nice man at the hatchery in Iowa. He threw them in because I filled up an afternoon with my questions. Guess there's not much excitement at a hatchery in Iowa in the middle of February. The bonus chick was a surprise. “Look mom – they gave us an extra chick!” The identity and sex of the extra chicks is a mystery that will unfold this spring, but so help me, if that nice man gave me any roosters – it’ll be the last e-chat we ever have!

We brought the chicks home and set them up in a box in the garage with heat lamps, food, and water. It is very distracting, and in fact this post is late and of no practical use because of my frequent visits to the little darlings in the garage. They only stay cute for a very short while and then they become large, noisy, garden-wrecking mobs that make me crazy-mad, but in a good way.

Have you ever thought of keeping your own chickens? Here are some good reasons –

1. They are excellent for pest control, eating the grubs and larvae all year long that would have become bothersome insects like Japanese beetles. Ticks are one of their very favorite delicacies. We’ve discovered that they also love stink bugs! We gather up the ones in the house with a shop vac and then empty the bag into the chicken pen. You should see those hens line up when they see my husband coming with the shop vac! I tell you if chickens could fly they would take care of our stink bug problem!
2. A young laying hen will produce nearly one egg a day for you! As they get older, their laying slows, but you’ll still get plenty of eggs for nearly five years from a single hen! If you’ve never had fresh eggs – you may not be appreciating this fact as much as you should. There is a BIG taste difference between a fresh egg and one from the store (which is most likely a month or more old)
3. Chickens make great pets. Really. They each have a personality. They provide endless hours of entertainment. If you handle them plenty when they are little, you can continue to handle them when they are older. My daughter has walked two of our chickens in parades (on a leash!). They become very attached to the person who feeds them (that would mostly be me). When I am outside, they follow me around as I do my chores. It always puts a smile on my face when I turn around to see 30 chickens racing down the hill after me.
4. Chickens will eat all your table scraps. We stay away from meat, though, because we want to keep our girls vegetarians. They don’t like tropical fruit, but just about anything else, they’ll gobble up.

Here’s the answers to the most common protests that arise from reluctant spouses when you propose getting chickens:

1. They’re noisy. Actually, no, they aren’t, unless you get a rooster and then, well, it’s a nice farmyard sound. You don’t need a rooster, though. Like most females they produce eggs, whether there’s anyone around to fertilize them or not. Our eggs are fertilized thanks to all the hanky panky going on in our yard, but roosters aren’t necessary to produce eggs. Occasionally a hen will make an announcement when she’s laid an egg she’s particularly proud of, but the noise isn’t any louder than your kids or dogs playing in the yard.
2. They’re dirty. Unless your chicken yard is muddy (as ours can be), they’re actually pretty clean animals. Of course, after handling them you’ll want to wash your hands, just like you would after handling your cat or dog.
3. They’re a lot of work. Really, there’s very little work, much less than there is with a cat or dog (or rodent in a smelly cage). You don’t have to clean up after them, except to sweep out the roosting house now and again and they put themselves to bed each night. Chicken waterers and feeders usually hold a few days worth of feed, so you don’t even need a petsitter when you go away.
4. Our neighborhood/town/county won’t let us have them. This isn’t always the case. I know lots of people who keep them in their backyards in very swanky neighborhoods. As mentioned above, they aren’t noisy or messy, so most people won’t even know you have them. Check with the powers that be, though, before launching this endeavor.
5. They’re expensive. Not really. Expense is relative. All you need to keep a few chickens is an enclosure like a dog kennel and a box/cabinet of some kind for them to roost in. My husband built ours mostly out of scrap lumber. We built a separate laying house because we have so many, but it’s not necessary. Baby peeps are inexpensive - $2-$4 each depending on the breed. A 50lb bag of chicken feed feeds my girls for nearly a month for about $13, so figure you’ll spend a lot less on yours, especially if you supplement with table scraps, stale cereal, and leftover lunch crusts.

Hope this inspires you to consider keeping a few chickens yourself. If your living arrangement won’t allow, maybe you have a friend or relative who would go in on it with you. There are so many rewards in chicken keeping – amazing eggs, stellar fertilizer (chicken poop is premium fertilizer for your gardens), endless entertainment, and surprising life lessons about society, animal instincts, responsibility, and the pecking order.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

Backyard Chickens
McMurray Hatchery

Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow

Past posts:

It's Chicken Week!
My Hens Lay Golden Eggs
Chickens and Truth Telling
Parenthood According to Poultry

I’d write more, but I’m missing so much action out there in the peeps’ pen, so I gotta go. They grow up so fast. Only a week old and they’re already sprouting feathers on their wings!