Predator Strikes the Farm Again!

I need your help. See these feathers? Well, these chickens aren't molting. That is the remains of one of my roosters. Give me a hug this morning. Good boy. Good boy. You feeling better? Good boy. You hungry? Let's go eat breakfast. [Applause] I like it. Yes, sir. Come on, boy. Good boy. Get your breakfast. Are you a good friend? Are you good? Yes. Huh? Are you good? Free. Good boy. Fig. Fig. Show me a yummy fig. Oh no. Oopsie. Contact air prop. Good morning everybody and welcome back to another gorgeous day here on the Stony Ridge Farm. All around us, 150 acres of beautiful farmland. Got 50 cows. Well, not quite 50 anymore. I think we're down to 36 cows and we have a problem. So, we're headed over to the chickens and I need your help. I have a raptor problem. I've got a predator getting into my chicken coupe into my mobile c pin. You'll see it in a second. And uh it's taken one bird a day for the last few days. It's not good. So, let's ride over there and check on the chickens. Got some water back there for them. birdie birds. Birdie birds. Morning birdies. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Oh, showing off. This is the pasture sanitation crew. And that's a showoff. Uh, expect a rooster to crow throughout this video. That's just what they do. Every day, every morning, every evening, I come over here and I check on the birds and I give them a little bit of water and I spill half the water on the way over. A I hear you, Billy. So, we're going to set this water over here. Keep all three of these waters filled. Probably need to move one of these out of here and put them in the chicken coop next to the house. The one next to the house keeps running out of water. So, might do that today. But the real problem we're experiencing right now is I have a raptor issue and I don't know what to do. So, I'm going to take you guys over here to the coupe and show you um what's going on with this raptor issue. So, if you don't know about the pasture sanitation crew, this is around 30 something chickens that I hatched out from eggs. So, I harvested the eggs. I harvested the eggs and uh hatched them out in the incubator here in the house. All these birds were born right here on the Stony Ridge Farm. We have some starkline poultry netting surrounding this entire area and it's approximately yeah an acre, maybe 3/4 of an acre, maybe an acre and and a quarter. I don't really know. Uh it's a very large area. So far, no issues with foxes because of this awesome poultry netting. However, I cannot protect the birds from above. And I'm going to show you guys what's been going on. I've got a red tail hawk that is taking a chicken a day right now. Let's check it out. The chickens have a little bit of cover underneath this mobile coupe. And this is my mobile coupe. Here's how it all works. Uh this is a Chick Cozy automatic chicken coupe door. And uh there's a controller right here, a solar panel right here. It's all solar. It opens in the morning. We got some chickens in here, some hins. Uh, so it opens in the morning and it closes in the evening after dark to protect the birds. I'm going to actually close it right now. Let's see if that works. Pretty cool. It's got a safety mechanism in there that will open it up if a chicken gets caught in it. So, I really, really like that. This is my eggmobile/broodmobile. And in here are the hengear rollout nest boxes where the chickens lay their eggs. I've got to move this. and I move it probably every week or so through the field. And this is an area with the most sparse nutrition on the farm. Chicken manure is super high in nitrogen that gets that grass growing. Here is what we've got. That is the real problem. See these feathers? Well, these chickens aren't molting. That is the remains of one of my roosters. Um, I came out here the other day and literally this hawk is sitting in trees either right there or right over here and he is stalking the chickens. The these chickens that you see in the coupe right now are in there because they're smart and they're scared to come out. This is another scenario right here. Now that there's some bones right there. This is a whole chicken. This was a rooster right here. And that is a whole chicken. So that is a rooster right there. So we got one, two, three. I think I've taken out one chicken, too. So four, five chickens so far. And they've all been roosters that this hawk has taken from me. There is no way that I can protect these birds from an attack from above like this. There's just no way in a in a pasture like this, in a fence like this. I can't legally get rid of this problem. There is no way that I can legally get rid of this problem. So, the reason I'm here and the reason I'm talking to you guys about this is because I need your help. If you've ever experienced a raptor issue, an issue from above, um, and you know of a way to stop this, please post comments down there. I just simply don't have any idea how to stop this this hawk from swooping down and getting my chickens. Uh, he's not, which is a good thing, he's not eating or catching the hens. He's catching the roosters. And typically these these chickens are bigger than that hawk. Um so the other day I walked up here and I knew the hawk had been around. I had seen him a couple times in these trees up here. And I walked over here and all the chickens were still hanging out here, but they were kind of looking that way. That hawk was sitting there right there with the chickens and eating another chicken. Just sitting there eating another chicken right in front of the chickens. And all the chickens are sitting there like, "Dr. I think this hawk is just landing. It's coming down here and it's landing and it's just walking up and picking out a rooster. One of the roosters maybe goes at it and tries to fight it. It just grabs it and eats it. It's weird. Very, very weird. So, you can see they're all on high alert right here. uh worried about they've actually ate less food here in the last I'd say four or five days uh because they're nervous about the hawk getting them. And I understand. I totally do. So, um before we leave here, I'm going to look in the coupe and see. We're starting to get eggs right now. So, I'll show you guys how this mobile coupe works in these roll out nest boxes work. But, I like to take this down. We'll go ahead and open up. There's a lot of manure in here. That's okay. We're going to be scooping out that manure and utilizing it out here in the pasture. That's what the whole goal here is, is to sanitize behind the cows. These chickens, you won't see a cow patty anywhere out here. These chickens scrape through the cow patties and spread them out and help spread nutrition out on the pasture. That's what it's all about. And they create these wonderful eggs. So, you do see a lot of manure. And I'll be scooping this out and spreading it out on areas that need more nutrition on the farm. So, let's look in our hengear nest boxes real quick and see if any of these little hins are laying yet. If we've seen any, that's a sign when their brother, the rooster, starts to crow, then we know we're getting pretty close to time for eggs. Yeah. Yeah. So, check it out. Here are three uh eggs that are that have been laid in here. And uh I don't see any more, but maybe there will be some more. Worst thing you can do is let them sit and let the chickens learn how to peck the eggs. It's not a good thing. So, and they will eat their own eggs. But I think these guys are living in fear in here to be honest with you. I just think they're living in fear. So, I need your input. Please help me guys. If any of you know what to do about a raptor attack on your chickens, let me know. I do need your input. This is horrible. It's not good. Um, and I'm not here to feed the local wildlife. And I also don't want to lose my egg layers and my pasture sanitation crew. If he's taking one a day, it's only going to take about a month and a half and I won't have any chickens left. That's not cool at all. That's not what we want. So, let me know what you think, guys. Thanks a lot. Please hit that like button, subscribe to the channel. Love to have you back. I just thought I'd reach out to you guys as a community to see if you'd experienced this and what you did to fix the problem. Thank you. See you next time. >> Come on down to the Stony Ridge. Bring your wife and bring your kids. We're living [Music] what? Oh, my knee. Oh my freaking knee. Oh, what happened there? Oh, too much mountain bike on that. [Music] >> I hear you, Billy.