Plagued by Jackadaws

[Madcowz 0]

We are plagued by Jackadaws (that's what my 4 year old son calls them) eating our chickens food in our garden.

 

We have an open run and the daws spend all day dropping in and stealing the food. They sit on the cross bars and then drop in.

 

Now, I have sat behind the compost heap and shot a few with the .410 but I can't keep up and need a better solution.

 

I can get hold of a larsen from our keeper but would they use it when they have an ample supply of food available in the chicken run?

 

Should I get the larsen, and cover the chicken run with a temporary cover of wire while we do some population control?

 

What is my best course of action, we can't afford to feed the national jackdaw population with corn and layers pellets!

 

 

thanks,

 

/Mad

[john b 38]

Now it seems to me Madcowz that you have the very makings on an ideal situation there

 

Have a look here and you will see several designs for a jackdaw trap. You don't want to much about with a larsen and catch ones and twos, you want to get a good number.

 

Your chicken run is already effectively a pre-baited trap - you just need to put a lid on the thing and keep the chucks out for a day or two. Or cover part of the run with a trap 'roof', the rest withchicken wire and put a temporary fence across it to keep chooks and jackdaws seperate.

 

In fact if you make yourself a 'lid' that will sit across one of the spaces between two of the cross bars, either the rope net one or a funnel, you can simply get it out and reuse it every few months when the problem builds up again.

Edited June 21, 2007 by john b

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Just to add to that, Madz; If ye don't fancy having to wade through Jack corpses, why not just do what Game Farmers do? Sink a couple of long poles in ye hen run. Stick a cross batton on top of each. Then just drape Netlon, plastic garden netting over them.

 

The poles hold the net up in the middle so ye can move around in there beneath it quite comfortably. Yet it excludes avian pests and keeps things inside ticking.

 

All out extermination isn't always the easiest answer, mate

[stubby 175]

whats the size of your chicken run?

if your ever passing grays (essex) gimme a shout and I'll give you some pidgeon netting, which you can use as ditch has said

[Madcowz 0]

Thanks guys.

 

The run at present is only about 19ft by 13ft but we are building them a bigger one which is just over 50 ft x 20ft.

We could net off the smaller run but not the bigger run.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

And why couldn't ye net over a 20 x 50' ? Piece of piss! Have never been on a Game Farm? Ye think the likes of Patrick Pinker puts out all that feed to all those birds to get them laying all those eggs; Then let every corvid in the county help itself?

 

Tacks round the outer top side of ye run panals. Lines of tall T Poles through the middle of the pen. Sew sheets of netlon together. Drape them over the T's. Hook the edges on those tacks. Job done!

 

Not rocket science, was it?