Husband Steve bought me a solar powered electric fence for Christmas, the kind with the white plastic netting on poles that supposedly one person is able to move by themselves.We had visions of our 20+ chickens happily scratching only where we wanted them to, instead of them taking over the perennial bed. Instead, all we have done is provided a hungry hawk with 5 chicken dinners. Putting the 1.5 year old hens out on the pasture made them ripe picking for a big Cooper’s Hawk. At first we thought it was a fox, but then after we lost another one that was in a double electric fence (garden fence plus poultry netting) in the middle of the day, we put two and two together and that’s trouble with a capital H. The most recent victim was a beautiful 8 pound white Wyandotte. As I drove up the driveway, I watched her (the Hawk, not the hen) fly away out of the chicken enclosure.Running a cursing toward the pen, I removed the poor dead hen, and raked up the feathers to avoid traumatizing the rest of the flock further. Not that it helped, they didn’t come out of the chicken tractor for at least another 24 hours. since it was below freezing, I declined to bury the poor girl until I could get a shovel into the ground. I hid her behind a tree, beyond the gaze of her former mates, but not from the gaze of the sharp eyed hawk. She came back the next day for seconds. Another 14 degree night prevented me from digging that hole , and a hungry fox did the job for me, removing the dead hen in the middle of the night. My friends at Piedmont Wildlife Animal Rescue would probably thank me for keeping their woodland friends alive through these late winter days. Steve and I ran fishing line all over the top of the hen enclosure; supposed to deter hawks. The obnoxious rooster that lives with the other flock of hens does a good job of protecting his girls. We haven’t lost one yet from that flock.
Now if I can just figure out how to keep the blue heron out of the pond. Fishing line or rooster?
