Hawk Attack Aftermath

Last two hens

It’s been over ten days since a red-tailed hawk killed one of our hens--and the two remaining girls are still traumatized.

For the first five days after the attack, they wouldn’t leave the coop--not for food, not for water. It appeared that they were spending the days just milling around the coop floor or hanging out on the platform under their roost.

I would open the man door and try to reassure them they would be safe, coax them out with feed or scratch, but they wouldn’t budge. All I could do was sprinkle some feed on the wood chips on the floor, which they would peck at halfheartedly. I put a bucket of water in the coop too, since they wouldn’t come out to drink out of their regular waterer.

Their eating pattern had changed too: usually, fresh feed in the feeder would have them eating with gusto. Now they’d only peck at the bits, once, twice, then stop eating, lift their heads and look around.

Finally, the day came when they came out of the coop of their own accord. Since then, they are emerging once or twice a day to eat--once again, do their "peck-peck-look around" for only a few minutes. Then they'll disappear back into the coop.

Yesterday, I did see an encouraging sign they might return to their normal, energetic girls: there were little round depressions in the loose dirt in one corner of their caged pen—they’d been dust-bathing! 

Dust-bathing is an instinctive behavior of laying hens: they will scratch out a shallow hole, and sink right into it, fluffing the soil around them with their wings. The goal is to get dirt in and among their feathers, which apparently discourages parasites.

Despite that positive sign, there’s another distressful indication that things aren’t right: they’d been excellent layers before the hen was killed, but the two girls left haven’t laid since the attack.

After a hawk killed one of our hens years ago (our first flock), the five girls remaining had also hunkered down in the coop--but only for three or four days afterward. These two hens are clearly less resilient.

I wonder if it’s the breed: the girls are Buff Orpingtons, more of a gentle type of laying hen. And since this flock (before losing the three to predators) has been so prone to broodiness, it could be they’re very comfortable spending days on end inside their coop.

But it’s sad to see them decline. Without light, their combs are turning paler. And they seem to have lost their zest. What wouldn’t I give for one of them to peck at my legs again, telling me, “C’mon, I want some special treats!”

With the constant pressure from predators around here, sometimes I feel we’re in a losing battle. Our neighbors lost a 3^rd hen the week before the attack at our place—and now they’re down to only three chickens. They, and John and I, have come to the same conclusion: our only solution to get our hens back into light and free-ranging opportunities is to cover their yard with netting or steer wire.

For us, it’ll be a big job: our yard is at least 15’x15’. We’ll need some new supports going down the middle, and the way hens scratch, making huge divots in the ground, it’ll take a lot of muscle to bury the supports deep enough.

For now—at least until our two girls are interested in venturing back into the sunshine—their caged pen will have to do.

We have already changed our egg consumption. Gone are the days of being lavish with our supply, having eggs whenever we wanted: 3-egg omelet, anyone? 

Not any more. We currently have a bunch stored in the shop fridge, but without any expectation of more eggs, we will be parsing out our intake. The next step is buying store eggs for baking, to help stretch our own supply.

But whatever adjustments we need to make to our eating or our homestead, I just want our girls to feel safe again.