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I want to clarify to anyone who has ever wondered whether a Buzzard will take and eat a chicken or hen and found mixed answers of 'yes' and 'no' when searching for the answer to the question, which is a categorical YES.
Now a free range chicken owner in 'Buzzard Country' West Carmarthenshire, I can categorically state that Buzzards 'DO and WILL' take a chicken and eat it. Before this I was led to believe that Buzzards do not take hens.
How do I know for sure ?
A buzzard took one of our chickens no more than 30 feet from our living room window today and we partly witnessed the very swift hunt by the protected bird of prey.
Our cat, who often plays with his 'live food' and is a real veteran to country living and also very Hen friendly with our chickens, was just as scared as the remaining chickens after witnessing the whole show and seeing one of his now 'chicken' friends being carried away by the buzzard, he was so shocked he was looking up in the air for a good minute or two in the direction of the Buzzards departure.
Not long after the attack, another of the buzzards group of 3 even came up from behind a close neighbouring treeline to take a look if there was anything left to take and flew off after seeing us outside but came back again not long later and at height over our house.
The impressive part of the whole scenario is that the Buzzard allowed only a couple of feathers to fall from our poor Hen as evidence she was taken, so luckily we were at home to witness the bird of prey attack the hen, who was away again, with our Hen in grip, in a second or two. If we had not been in and part seen it happen, we would not have guessed it was a Buzzard as they have been near the house before and never attempted to take a hen so our first port or blame would have been a fox as our neighbour recently lost all her chucks to a fox. As we all know, foxes make a real mess when they kill a chicken on the spot and all hell breaks lose in the process, birds of prey are quick, very quick and very good at what they do when it comes to getting something to eat.
We are going to make a scarecrow of sorts to help deter the Buzzards from now on and see if that stops any future attacks.
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