Guard Chickens

[kyratshooter]

I just heard my chickens go into a frenzy, as they do any time they are confronted by a predator. I looked out the window to discover a squirrel stealing some of their food pellets that had fallen outside their cage.

They did the same thign to the neighbor's cat yesterday. They generally ignore the cat but it must have been giving off a hungry vibe and upset them greatly.

They also went into warning mode when a friend came to the house the other day and the rooster would not let them out of their car! He kept running up and pecking at their shoes, actually charging at them.

This is new behavior. I am waiting to see if it continues and what parimeters control it before arming the birds and giving them badges.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://stockfresh.com/files/s/shevs/m/83/1168922_stock-photo-chicken-sheriff.jpg&imgrefurl=http://stockfresh.com/image/1168922/chicken-sheriff&usg=__x1tIKWtioVXK-pQTqykyyRMqBO4=&h=400&w=281&sz=52&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&tbnid=4E8zR8bDYNF0GM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=87&ei=Qt-0UNCaN4m89QSb1YCgDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsheriff%2Bchicken%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX% 26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1

[Mozartghost1791]

Chickens tend to do that a lot... I in fact had a rooster that would guard this one hen and attack anything else. Never really got any of them trained enough that they would protect a human... But the alarming clucks are good indicators of things sneaking around in the night.

[hunter63]

Badges?...Badges?...We don' need no stinking badges.....

Stopped to ask to hunt at a farm one day, little banty rooster wouldn't let me out of the truck....till the lady came out and called him off.

She says 'Yeah go ahead, but shoot the little PITA first.....I didn't.

Now if you really need guard birds, guineas are good....
But looks like you have it under control.

[kyratshooter]

I am not sure guineas would survive the coyotes around here. I had them at one farm and really liked having them around. They were a lot wilder than chickens, almost like having pheasants around.

I also had peacocks. That was a hoot. It was like living in a Tarzan movie when they sounded off in the evening.

I also had wild turkey that were only half wild and had their own e-mail address. They would invade the homestead and you had to kick them off the porch to get inside the house. As soon as hunting season opened they disappeared and were not seen again until season closed. I always claimed the WMA sent e-mail out and warned them.

The turkey were so thick in that area there was a fresh killed bird on the road almost every morning. I kept my son in good wing feathers for arrow fletchng for years just stopping along the road on the way to work. He also liked to use tail feathers to fletch his atalatal darts. There were many evenings that I stopped and recovered fresh birds I had watched fly into vehicles.

Saw one real bad wreck caused by a low flying turkey. That thing zeroed in on the windshield of a 1968 Chevy pickup like an antitank missle. Had almost the same effect too! Windshield exploded, the old man nearly had heart failure, his wife bailed out of the passenger side before the vehicle stopped rolling. It was something to see.

[hunter63]

We have a lot of power outages from turkeys flying down off the ridge, and running into the power lines........Big dumb birds, that can be the smartest bird....but only 15 minutes at a time.

[Adventure Wolf]

I ended up putting my rooster in a stew after he pecked at people one to many times. In fact I don't see roosters as anything more then something I have to pay for, and never found that they gave me an advantage that was worth the cost.

[shiftyer1]

Bring him over here, i'm losing a chicken a day including 4 roosters......I would like some guineas. Do they help out the chickens at all?