Hawk Attack Inside My Chicken Coop!

This post has been on my heart for several months. I've been putting it off and putting it off, because it's a painful story for me to tell....but here we go.

One of my fellow farming friends once told me that farm life is full of births and new life, but also full of deaths. I LOVE the birth side of farm life! The chicks that I hatched in March are now free ranging with the older hens, and it's so much fun to watch them. They are much smaller than the older hens, and much faster. As soon as I open their "baby coop" in the morning, they flap their wings as hard as they can to quickly get outside and explore the woods. It's like watching my kindergarten students at recess, they are in such an ecstatic hurry to play outside with little restrictions.

But what happens when one of the chickens die? How do you handle it, Kelly? It's a question I get asked a lot, especially by my fellow animal lovers. Some people consider their chickens as pets...some of them even put diapers on their little backsides so they can walk around the house. Although I love my girls and they love me, the hard fact is that chickens have a specific purpose on my farm. They clear my land of ticks and they provide me with fresh eggs. Chickens are livestock, and livestock die to feed others...a point I've had to accept, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to be a chicken farmer. So, no chicken diapers inside my house, haha.

No big surprise at all, but in the winter, all wild animals are hungry because food is hard to find. Trees are stripped bare of bark and decaying leaves in an effort for animals to feed and keep warm. Bare trees also means there are little places to hide and take cover from a predatory attack.

Nice warm, dry coops are highly appealing to animals on a rainy day or in the winter when the snow is stacked high and the temperatures are low. I've had a couple possums, a turtle. lots of sparrows, squirrels, mice, and a huge groundhog all break into the coop, not to have a chicken buffet, but to feast on chicken food and to stay warm.

Normally I provide I ton of pictures to illustrate my stories, but I only have a few for this tragic story. I promise my readers, I'll never post a picture of a dead animal on my blog.

On February 11 of this year, I found a dead chicken laying on the floor inside my run. It didn't look eaten, except for a small tear on the belly. Heart attacks are common for chickens. I couldn't find any predators inside the coop, so I assumed the hen had died of a heart attack and the other hens started eating her (yes, chickens eat chickens...check out my post called The Chicken Hoarder.)

As I was removing the body with my shovel, all the other chickens came inside the coop to see what I was doing. Chickens are natural busybodies, and they always have to know what's going on. It was like a Dr. Seuss book...The hens followed Kelly outside into the woods while she laid the hen to rest. The hens followed Kelly inside the coop when she collected eggs. The hens followed Kelly outside to eat their afternoon snack. The hens followed Kelly everywhere, BUT, for being the loud, nosey busybodies they are....they didn't let me know there was a bad guy trapped inside my coop.

The next morning, which happened to be on my fourteenth wedding anniversary, I quickly fed the chickens their breakfast in the dark because I was in a hurry to go to work. If I would have taken the time to turn on the coop's light, this story possibly would have ended better. After work, I came home, got my muck boots on, and went out to collect eggs. Opening the front door to my house, I could see inside the chicken-wired run of the coop about 50 feet away, and inside the run, there was a huge Cooper's Hawk flying frantically from wall to wall trying to escape.

Hawks eat chickens. Hawks are predatory animals. Hawks normally hunt OUTSIDE chicken coops, but rarely INSIDE chicken coops. My first thoughts were of immediate terror and horror.

The small green house is my "Baby Coop". The main coop is connected to the side of the barn.

I looked around the yard, no chickens were in sight. My thoughts grew dark...where were my girls? They normally greet me whenever I come outside my front door, but it was deadly silent outside. I ran to the baby coop, which at the time, I constantly left open for hens to take shelter from the snow. Thankfully, I found about fifty chickens stuffed to the brim inside the little green coop (that is meant for 10 hens) you can see from the picture. They were terrified and hiding from the hawk.

Knowing most of my flock was safe gave me the courage to get closer to the run and figure out how get the hawk out of my coop. Seeing the hawk fly from wall to wall in absolute panic trying to find freedom, I looked through the front door and saw one of my favorite hens, Blonde (My Gift From The Amish), dead in the middle of the run. The hawk ate her.

The Hawk

I've been writing about Blonde a lot ever since the attack, and I love that she has her own fan club now...everyone loves my Blonde and her babies! When a chicken dies, I normally can keep my cool, get a shovel and take care of business. But when I found Blonde dead with a mad hawk swooping all around her trying to escape...boy, oh, boy, I'm glad no one but God caught the words screaming from my mouth or see the ugly temper tantrum I had outside my coop.

How did a massive predatory bird find the little chicken door outside the coop? I'm guessing that the hawk swooped down to eat the first chicken, the chicken tried to hide inside the coop but the hawk followed her. Once inside, the hawk could not find a way back out since the chicken door is on the ground and quite small. Since he couldn't find his way out, he hid in the rafters of the coop's run which is why I couldn't find him.

Opening the human sized door of the chicken coop as wide as it would go, I was really, really hoping the hawk would see the large opening and fly right back out. He didn't.

I think after being trapped in a coop for almost two days, he was in extreme panic mode. He couldn't see straight or think straight, he thought he was going to die. Since he couldn't find a way out, I would have to help him (Please help me, Lord!). Knowing I couldn't trust the actions of a predatory bird, a wild animal, or an animal in panic mode, I wasn't sure if I could get the hawk out of the coop without getting injured myself.

My husband was gone on a work trip that day and could not help me, so I had my 10 year old son get my phone and wait outside the coop ready to call 911 if I got hurt. Getting the same shovel I used to clean up the hawk's first victim, I held it over my head ready to hit the swerving hawk if it came to attack me. I went inside the coop, and was surprised when the hawk tried to fly away from me, he was even more scared with me close by. Unfortunately, every time I tried to scare him out the door, he would fly straight into the chicken wire.

The only way I could think of to free the bird was to play a game of baseball, the hawk being the ball and my shovel being the bat. If I had been video taped, I probably could have won $100,000 on America's Funniest Home Videos playing baseball with a hawk, and we are both super scared of each other. Since I'm not at all athletic or in shape, plus the hawk was a very fast moving target, plus I was moving on pure adrenaline...it took about 10 hits before I made contact. I hit the hawk as hard as I could with my shovel and it flew outside the front door of the coop. He sat on the ground glaring at me, with blood dripping down his face.

It was the closest I had ever come to killing an animal. With the shovel still in hand, and with the hawk staring at me on the ground, we were both wondering if I was going to finish the job. I know there are laws against killing certain predatory birds, but this bird had killed two of my hens (that I knew of until I opened the second door in the coop, I'll get to that in a second). I didn't know if this hawk would come back to break inside my coop again. As we stared at each other, I felt an enormous amount of love and respect for this hawk, this beautiful bird that God created. His eyes were gold and majestic. He looked so wise and calm, as though he was okay with my decision.

It seemed like we stayed this way for hours, but with the door open to the coop, I didn't want him to fly back inside, especially in his wounded state. I made a couple steps forward towards him, he didn't move. I then had my son make a couple steps forward, and finally, the hawk flew off. I was so thankful I didn't break one of his wings!

Once he was gone, I opened the second door inside the coop that goes into the nesting area. I found four more birds in that section, two dead and two alive. The hawk did not kill the other two hens, they had been trying to hide so intensely that they strangled themselves underneath one of my roosting perches.

Cleaning the bodies was a sad state of affairs, and I was crying like a baby at the pile of dead chickens at the back of my woods. The fifty chickens inside the baby coop slowly came out one by one once the hawk was gone. I gave them a ton of treats that night to calm them and myself down. The roosters, even though they didn't kill the hawk for me during those two days, they rounded up as many chickens as they could and got them to safety...so they did their job.

I've since found the hawk's hiding spot in my run, and I look high up in the rafters of my coop every night to make sure another predatory bird doesn't find their spot up there. Fortunately the hawk has not come back yet, so I'm hoping he got my clear message.

A Cute Chicken Picture To Cheer Everyone Up: )

Most of my posts aren't as serious as this post, so I apologize if this is your first time reading Kelly's Country Squawk! But predatory attacks are something every chicken person has to deal with whether you have four birds or seventy birds. Even though losing birds is sad and tragic, raising chickens still has more ups than downs (in my opinion). Every time I come home and they start running and squawking at me as fast as they can, I feel like a million bucks...plus, I love feeding my family their farm fresh eggs every day.

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly