The Hawk

This appeared in the March 4, 2021 edition of The Fish Wrap.

As those of you who have raised chickens know, hawks are one of their predators. Throughout the summer, we moved the chickens and egg mobile to fresh pasture every day. We often noticed hawks flying over and checking them out and the chickens definitely noticed as well! But no hawks attempted to take one of the chickens - they just watched.

Come winter, we moved the chickens to a stationary spot in the bottom to keep them warmer. The winter paddock was larger and gave chickens more room to wander off alone. And the Hawk was hungry. The first sign something was wrong was that we noticed the chickens were all hiding under the egg mobile and 3 of them were outside the paddock. If chickens are happy in the paddock, they rarely fly the coop. Going to investigate, Jarrod discovered a Hawk eating a chicken in the paddock. The hawk caught the chicken out in the open and dragged her to some brush to begin eating. We lost 2 chickens to the Hawk that week.

Broken-hearted, we took steps to deal with the Hawk. We made the paddock smaller so that the chickens would stay closer together and tied string among the trees so there was less of a runway. Now there were 480 eyes watching together and with the string, less room to swoop in. We haven’t lost any chickens since that week.

We feel a sacred duty to give the chickens the best life possible. Happy chickens are good for our souls, and good for soil and they produce nutrient-dense, delicious eggs that are good for our community who eat them!  Just like us, a sense of safety is key to chickens living a happy life. Mr. Hawk has moved on for now and the chickens are safe.