Are there chickens in your neighborhood?

[terracore]

"Do cats attack them much? I seem them mix with each other quite regularly. Seems the chickens are to big of a target."

The cats attack the chicks not the adults. They will kill them just for "fun".

"How do you catch the chickens, terracore? The feral ones seem way more skittery than the usual barnyard chicken. We can't get within twenty feet before they go skittering off clucking like mad."

Some of the ferals get aggressive at feeding time and will even "attack" the feed scoop. I've even had them fly at my face for some reason I can't comprehend. That is a good time to grab them. The skittish ones get shot.

It seems that coccidia kills most of the chicks in Hawaii, and we've had drier weather here which in theory should be reducing the parasite loads in the soil. So one explanation could be the chick mortality rate is lower with the dryer weather. It's also possible that the chickens are getting more resistant to coccidia over successive generations.

[hotzcatz]

We can't even get most of the ferals to come within twenty feet even if we have feed for them. Those are usually the ones we don't want, too. One is that rooster and the other is the dark hen followed by those cheeping peepers. I haven't a clue as to how they don't get eaten by something, all the do is go 'CHEEP, CHEEP, CHEEP' etc., etc. Isn't that like screaming 'TASTY EATS! TASTY EATS! ??? If they just weren't so noisy and didn't dig holes all over the place they'd not be such a nuisance. Just a few is one thing, but now with two hens towing a pile of chicks behind, we could be overwhelmed with chickens here pretty soon if they all grow up.

I may order in some domestic chickens and see if we can get a barnyard rooster to take over the flock. Eventually we'd end up with better chickens in the yard, I'd expect.