Types of Chicken Predators in the Sky

Vigilance and a rooster or two protect against flying chicken predators such as turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks and bald eagles.

By Jerry Schleicher
Updated on July 12, 2022
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by Steve Byland
Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis

From my front yard, I can watch red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures circling over our home daily. A rafter of wild turkeys lives in the woods behind our house, and many crows share our neighborhood. Occasionally, I’ll even spot a bald eagle perched in a tree along the Missouri River. It’s a great place to be a birder. Unless, of course, you keep chickens.

When I was a youngster, my mother warned me to watch out for chicken hawks. Although, to my knowledge, the hawks that soared over our farm never once attacked any of the cranky old biddies or the crusty rooster that inhabited the farmyard. They’d probably seen the rooster take after my little brother, and decided the fight wouldn’t be worth the meal.

In later years, I learned that “chicken hawk” is a colloquialism that describes several species of hawks, including the red-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk, and the sharp-shinned hawk.

Know your chicken predators

With a wingspan of about 3 1/2 feet, and weighing 2 to 4 1/2 pounds, red-tails are big enough to kill and dine on full-grown chickens, along with mice, squirrels, small birds and rabbits, and even cats and small dogs. And with eyesight eight times more acute than a human’s, hawks have no trouble spotting their next meal.

Weighing just 11 to 24 ounces, the Cooper’s hawk typically feeds on songbirds, along with chipmunks, hares, mice, and squirrels.

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