You might remember that I lost a baby chicken (maybe 8-9 weeks old) to a pair of ravens back in late April.
That wasn’t the first incident.
We lost two hens out in the pasture to raven attacks last year.
From what I’ve read online, it seems like it’s not terribly common for ravens to attack full-grown chickens, but the pair that we had hanging around were really aggressive and persistent.
And of course it’s illegal to harm them.
So, we had to try and outsmart them.
And as it turns out, Peter and the Crow Away team in Australia have done just that!
Note: This might read like a paid advertisement, but it is not. I’m just a very satisfied customer. 🙂
Crow Away is a soundtrack, about an hour long, that is apparently very unnerving to corvids (crows, ravens).
You can purchase have the product online, download the audio file, and have it up and running in minutes.
We loaded it onto an old mp3 player and set it to play continuously through some old computer speakers set up in our garden shed.
And the Ravens went away.
Seriously.
I was very skeptical at first. I watched carefully for the first few days and kept my little chickens cooped.
When I finally let them back out, I thought perhaps the prospect of baby chicken for dinner might bring them right back.
But it didn’t.
They are still in the area. But they aren’t hanging around our property anymore.
And I’m calling that a victory.
So I just wanted to share this info in case there are other folks out there struggling with Ravens and crows attacking their chickens and or stealing eggs. It’s not something you can do just once, or occasionally. I’ve found that if the soundtrack stops, the ravens return pretty quickly.
But it’s been working great for us for about two months now, and I’m still kind of amazed.
