The 6 Easiest Ways To Protect Your Chickens From Predators

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Predator populations in many parts of the country are on the rise. That means the chances of a predator finding and preying on your chickens is high if you don’t take every precaution to keep them at bay.

First, realize that predators are lazy opportunist. Most attacks on your flock will be because something was too tempting to pass up for a hungry critter. Predators that actually work to break in and steal chickens by chewing through the side of the hen house or digging for hours etc., are rogues that must be exterminated.

The best practice for predator control is to never give them an easy opportunity to dine on your chickens. Yet there is no one tactic that is all-encompassing. It’s more like a lot of little things all working together to keep predators away from your chickens. Here are some tips to help keep your flock safe and sound.

1. Inspect daily.

Do visual inspections daily for holes, loose wire and generally anything that looks out of place or in need of repair to keep predators out of your chickens. In addition, keep your eyes out for any signs of animals prowling around, looking for an easy meal. This could be tracks, scat, signs of chewing or digging, feathers scattered about, or anything that looks out of place. With larger flocks, predators can get a chicken a night and you’re none the wiser until you realize your flock is shrinking.

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This could be tracks, scat, signs of chewing or digging, feathers scattered about, or anything that looks out of place. With larger flocks, predators can get a chicken a night and you’re none the wiser until you realize your flock is shrinking.

2. Keep a rooster with your flock.

Image source: Pixabay.com

A good rooster is the first line of defense against predators. If a hawk, owl or any other flying menace comes into view on the horizon, my rooster immediately spots it and sounds the alarm that sends everyone running for cover. Over the years, I’ve lost a few good roosters to predators because they typically will sacrifice themselves to allow the hens to get to safety. I’ve even watched roosters discipline hens for not taking cover when the alarm was sounded. If you don’t see this kind of behavior in your rooster, it may be time to replace him with one that takes his job seriously.

3. Teach your chickens to roost in the coop, not outside.

Training your flock to return to the henhouse each night is as simple as keeping them inside the coop for a week or so when you first get them. Be certain to provide plenty of roosting area. This reinforces to the birds that the coop is home and where they should roost. With an older flock that has never been accustomed to roosting inside the coop, you also can establish the habit by keeping them inside for a couple of weeks. It usually takes a bit longer with older birds that have bad habits.

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Rogue birds that will not cooperate should be culled. If you allow a few birds to roost outside, it creates temptation for predators that would otherwise leave your birds alone. They eventually get one of the rogue birds and then become a rogue predator that goes out of its way to kill and eat chickens.

4. Don’t tempt unwanted critters.

Image source: Pixabay.com

Open feeders, garbage cans, animal carcasses, or any other type of food will draw unwanted attention to your farm. If a chicken dies, dispose of it immediately, preferably where no other animal will find and eat it.

5. Create an environment that discourages predators.

Predators aren’t fond of wide-open spaces. Keep hiding places to a minimum around coops and buildings. Weeds, piles of junk and lumber all give predators a place to hide that makes them feel more secure. Avoid it.

6. Keep a farm dog.

I have never been without a farm dog. Over the years, that has been one reason we have avoided coons, coyotes, foxes and other creatures of the night. Some dogs can be trusted with livestock … but others can’t. I’ve had both. If they can’t be left out with the flock running loose, I keep them contained until the chickens roost and then let them run the property for the night. Even a dog tied to the doghouse at night near the animals is a big deterrent to predators.

Finally, consider controlling the population of predators through ethical hunting and trapping, or invite someone else to do it for you.

Remember: Predator control is something accomplished daily – and not in a day.

What advice would you add to this list? Share your tips in the section below:

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Save time and energy with the fenced chicken coop/garden

By John Silveira

Issue #44 • March/April, 1997

My engineer father was not fond of wasting time or energy. He was always searching for a better, more efficient way to perform chores, especially chores that reoccurred often. Two re-occurring chores he enjoyed were gardening and raising chickens, and he decided that he could make both the gardening and the raising of a chicken flock even more enjoyable by making them more efficient.

He realized that both chores were essentially feeding operations. You feed the garden to make it produce food, and you feed the chickens to make them produce eggs and, well, more chickens. So he decided that the best way to make both more efficient was to combine them and let them help feed each other.

To achieve this he built his “self-fertilizing” chicken coop/garden. The idea was so simple that he probably wasn’t the first person ever to have done it, but I’ve never seen another one like it.

What he did was build a chicken coop with two small access doors, one on the east side, and the other on the west side. Each door was for the chickens, and they led to separate fenced-in yards.

On the north side of the coop was a regular sized door for us. On the south side was a wide window with a hinged wooden cover. That window looked directly out onto a compost heap. Each time the coop was cleaned, everything was shoveled out through that window.

That first year the chickens had the run of the yard on the east side of the coop. He kept the access door on the west side closed, and in that yard he planted the family’s vegetable garden.

By putting the yards on the east and west sides, he ensured both yards had maximum exposure to the sun. With the coop on the north side, he later told me, he minimized the shadow the chicken house cast over the garden.

Our access to each fenced yard was through a gate in the fence. With the fences, he not only kept the chickens where he wanted them, he kept predators away from the chickens, pests out of the garden, the neighbors’ dogs out of the compost, and they provided a lattice upon which his beans and other climbing plants could flourish.

In the fall, after that year’s garden had been harvested, he closed the door on the east side of the coop and opened the west side. The chickens now had the run of the old garden with its remnants of the harvested plants as well as the plants that had gone to seed.

My father, in the meantime, set about turning over the chicken dropping-enriched soil in what had been the chicken yard on the east side. With its year of chicken droppings and the compost he tilled in from the compost pile, he was setting the stage for a great garden the following year.

The chickens, now in the west side yard, were happily scrounging in the old garden and preparing the soil for next year’s garden. It was so efficient that he never found the need to improve upon it, and he kept that engineer efficient chicken coop/garden going for years.

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