The hawks are coming,
”
cried a chicken waddling for cover.
”
The hawks are coming!
”
All hell broke loose
– it was a chicken stampede! The frenzied flurry of chickens
scattering for cover was more than the sheep could handle.
The hawks are coming,” cried a chicken waddling for cover. “The hawks are coming!”
All hell broke loose – it was a chicken stampede! The frenzied flurry of chickens scattering for cover was more than the sheep could handle.
“There is something out there that wants to eat us!” they yelled.
Off they went with the goats in pursuit of Daisy Mae, our beer guzzling jackass in hopes of protection from what predator they still didn’t know.
Ground forces of predators have fiercely attacked our chickens and ever since we got back from our trip to Idaho, they are now being bombarded by air.
Apparently, the dynamics of Linda’s Last Chance Ranch were too good to pass up. While we were away, dozens of hawks moved in leaving us surrounded by Red-tails and chicken hawks. These hawks have taken residence in the valley of oaks, where they are raising families with hungry appetites. We have plenty of rodents for them to feed their young, but they have developed a taste for our chickens!
It isn’t easy raising free-range chickens in a real environment. One rooster had a near-death experience when he was about four months old after a hawk swooped down and tried to grab him. Fortunately, the hawk only hooked the rooster’s tail along with a few sacrificial feathers enabling the rooster to get away. Two months later, he still isn’t over it.
We have diagnosed this rooster as “hawked-shocked,” equivalent to shell-shocked. You know how you can tell when a chicken is hawked-shocked? When they have that bugged-eyed look of comic actor Don Knotts, which is the namesake of one nervous cock, Don.
Don is the only rooster that looks like he needs Valium. He frantically zigzags across the driveway heading for the yard always looking over his shoulder. He takes cover under my car or in a bush and will run along the outside wall of the house. He never runs in open space – he’s nuts!
We’ve been somewhat successful keeping the four-legged predators away with fencing, brush clearing and a load or two of buckshot. But what do you do when a Red-tail or Coopers Hawk comes diving at your chickens?
All you can do is to run outside flaying your arms and shouting like a lunatic.
“Too beautiful to harm,” says my partner.
As much as I like my chickens, he’s right! But when I hear the chickens give their “incoming” call, I can stand outside and discourage them with a few sounds of my own.
I know you think chickens can’t talk, but you’re wrong. While they may not be able to discuss Monday Night Football, which I’m not sure constitutes as “talking,” they can sure as hell make each other aware when the hawks come hunting.
We have two types of chickens – ones that fly and ones that don’t. The chickens from San Juan Bautista are fliers, not fryers, but our Plymouth Barred Rock hens are layers and fryers and can’t fly. But they sure can run a mean waddle and screech the call of the wild when danger is present.
In addition to their “incoming” warnings, chicken have about 25 sounds in which they communicate. And let me tell you, hang around chickens long enough and you’re bound to distinguish a few pitches and tones between chattering cackles, screams and squawks.
Chickens have a definite this-is-my-food cawing sound as well as a these-are-my-chicks macho sound and a you’re-violating-the-pecking-order bossy sound. These sounds contradict the notion that they’re “chicken.”
It is amazing to watch a San Juan chicken fight off a hawk. One San Juan mother hen in particular is fearless, a master decoy and an aggressive fighter. She is anything but chicken.
Chickens make a soft cooing sound when you come outside and they want you to throw some corn to them and a very different one if you’re too busy and start back into the house. They sort of growl at you.
The roosters have some unique sounds of their own as they discuss which hens belong to which rooster, as well as the sound the rooster makes after mating that only Jim seems to fully understand.
When it comes to chicken chatter, I can turn it off because as the mother of four children, I clearly know the difference between the noise of on-going chatter and the sound of a real emergency. But to my domesticated partner, an original Eddie Albert of “Greenacres” TV fame, all the sounds run together. So he ends up running out to answer every call he hears.
Sometimes when the clamor of our chickens reaches an unusually high elevation, he’s been heard to mutter, “The only sound I want to hear from that chicken is the popping of grease in a frying pan.”
Linda Lee King can be reached at wi*******@**no.com.
