chickens

Most of our chickens are free range chickens, meaning they are free to roam the property and into the woods or anyplace their little hearts desire, we have no neighbors around us that this can be a problem for and it makes for far better egg production when they are free range.But there is a drawback related to the youngsters and that comes from the air born predators such as hawks during the day time and owls at night, the owls are the worst because they can and do hide in the trees and when the youngsters get to far away from momma hen, they can become a target so fast.Last night we lost 3 youngsters who for some reason didn’t want to stay in the hen house with mom and returned to the outdoors to roost behind the hen house, this morning we found nothing but feathers from the 3 youngsters and we think it was the Owl who has been giving us problems here for awhile now.

We do have an Owl trap on the property and it has caught a few over the years, we then have to call the game commission for instructions on what to do once they are captured.