Too close for comfort

[IamRainey]

I dither around about letting my girls free range and being a helicopter chicken keeper. We're in a busy suburban area of a major city but we have a full complement of predators: racoons, dogs, coyotes and hawks.

Today, because our days are getting longer I was going to let my girls out into the yard around their run. It's enclosed in a 5' chain link fence and I figure if I let them out the last couple hours of daylight they'll put themselves in the coop and I won't have to be rounding them up. It's worked fine the couple times that I did it and I was headed out there this afternoon to let them out when a hawk came flying out of the chicken yard barely clearing the fence with a lizard in its talons!

So much for the free time. Sorry, girls! Now that I know we're on the hawk's radar it will be hard for me to work up the courage to do it again.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I dither around about letting my girls free range and being a helicopter chicken keeper.... and I was headed out there this afternoon to let them out when a hawk came flying out of the chicken yard... with a lizard in its talons!

So much for the free time. Sorry, girls! Now that I know we're on the hawk's radar it will be hard for me to work up the courage to do it again.

What happened to the idea that hawks were beautiful, magnificent, amazing, creatures of the sky? let me guess, once we become chicken keepers some of our more untenable ideas fall by the wayside.