How We Protect Our Chickens from Hawks (And Other Aerial Predators)

Aerial predators, such as hawks, are one of the most common reasons why flock owners lose chickens. That’s particularly true for chickens that are allowed to free-range.

We almost lost one of our chickens only a few days after we moved them from the brooder into their coop in our backyard. Kathy witnessed the incident from just a few feet away: a hawk swooped down and landed on top of a five-week-old chick, but it took off without the bird in its talons. Our white leghorn was limping for a few days but wasn’t injured otherwise.

That prompted us to look for solutions to our hawk problem. But even after doing hours of research, we couldn’t find a solution that we felt was both effective and feasible to implement.

Some of the suggestions from other chicken owners that we dismissed were:

- Getting a rooster (we live in a suburban area with neighbors).

- Keeping the chickens in the coop 24/7 (we want our chickens to free-range).

- Placing fake owls around the property (we assume that hawks will eventually figure out these are decoys).

- Hanging shiny objects, such as old compact discs, all over the property (it looks ridiculous).

- Creating a system of netting using fishing line (fishing line degrades quickly).

- Getting a livestock guardian dog (they’re good with land predators but not so good with aerial predators).

We finally stumbled upon a special type of netting called Hawk Stopper, which we installed in an area with a 20 feet radius around the coop (using nylon rope). The netting, combined with the following factors, has effectively stopped any further hawk attacks — even though we’ve had several flyovers almost every day:

Our birds are getting bigger and are arguably more difficult to catch than smaller birds, chipmunks or squirrels (all of which are prevalent around the property).
We have plenty of natural cover from trees and bushes, especially around the fence line of the property, and our chickens use this cover effectively during the day.
We have several structures around our property that can provide cover, including a playground, a shed and the chairs around our firepit.

Last but not least, we have probably also been lucky. But we feel that by adding the netting, we made it difficult enough to encourage hawks to look for easier prey. And at the end of the day, all animals (including humans) tend to go for the path of least resistance.

[Chapter Markers]
0:00 - Intro
0:21 - Why Are We Protecting Our Chickens From Hawks?
2:22 - Solutions We Considered
7:32 - How We Built Our Nylon Netting Structure

[Links]
https://www.amazon.com/Predator-Pee-H...

To follow along with us as we learn the ropes of beekeeping and suburban homestead living, check out our Instagram account (  / kummerhomestead  , where we share the useful tips and tricks we discover.

#ProtectingChickens #RaisingChickens #BackyardChickens