I was relaxing on the futon with two snuggly cats and a good book when the hawk swooped down out of nowhere.  "Aaaah!" I shrieked and our more skittish cat fled the house just as fast as our tweens scattered in terror.

I couldn't tell at first whether anyone had been taken.  The tweens had gone to ground under the trailer or in the weeds and wouldn't come out no matter how much grain I rattled.

Slowly, they crept forth.  Eight chickens, nine chickens, twelve chickens.  Finally, all fourteen tweens were accounted for --- thank goodness!

I've been reading that even in optimal pastured situations, less than a quarter of the chickens are willing to brave the great outdoors at any given time.  I can just imagine farmers prodding Cornish Cross out the door of the coop --- "When I was your age, chickens played outside!  No TV-watching, couch potatoes on my farm!"

Repeated studies have shown that adding trees or bushes to a pasture entices more chickens outside.  Now I know why.  Could our forest pastures be the reason we've never had a hawk attack until now?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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