Selfsufficientish.com

There's a cat in the hen house what I'm a gonna do?
There's a cat in the hen house what I'm a gonna do?
I'm gonna beat that cat......

Ok - please let me introduce you to Jade, my short hair, ginger and white tabby. She's about 20 months old and about the same size and colour as the chooks.

Well yesterday morning, she decided to sneak into the hen house while I was feeding them. In my early morning, bleary-eyed state, I didn't notice that I now suddenly had 7 hens instead of six and I didn't see her sneak through the pop-hole into their run.

I went out the back of the hen house as usual to check that the run was still intact and that was when I noticed her. Only, so did the hens!

It kind of went like this:

Hen attacks - cat shoots around run at top spead
Hen attacks again - cat shoots around run again
Hen attacks again - cat shoots up the side of the run and is hanging, upside down, by her claws from the chicken wire mesh on the top of the run.
Then she discovered that hens can fly:lol:

I was laughing so much that I couldn't open the door quickly enough to rescue her.

Poor cat, I think she's still under the bed now.

Zoe

rofl poor kitty!!

The cat has just learnt that chickens hurt!

My cat learnt at 6 mths they hurt so now leaves them alone, and the chickens trust him that much that I have seen all four of them snuggled up in the dust bath hole with the cat in the middle. However the cat, the 'orrible cat, next door feels she is a cut above it all and attacked the cockerel.

Bad move!

Lots of feathers and limping cat!

She now gives the chickens a very, very, wide berth

I'm still waiting to see what the results are when my 7 new babies go outside and meet up with all our cats for the first time!
They'll be in a run first, so should hopefully climatise a bit between them, then the back garden is theirs, so the cats will probably detour through the field!

Just so long as the 'babies' aren't really little fluffy things. The cats would like that!

I've seen my chooks attacking the cat, and the ducks attacking the chooks.....

No, these babies are BIG now, I can't believe how big they've got just in a few weeks!
I do hope they all get on OK......

Well from my experience the chooks can certainly hold their own against a cat. The other cat definitely gives them a wide berth, it's just the youngster who's too inquisitive for her own good.

Zoe

We've got loads of pheasants around here and the cats just completely ignore them, so I reckon it's a promising sign. They only get the occassional vole or similar and would rather wait for their food from a packet!!

one cat completeley ignores the chickens, always had since the day they arrived.
The other youngster wanted to play and still does, he runs to the chickens, they cluck, he runs away.
The ducks are also scared of the chickens.