Predator vs Black Chicken, Old Crow Medicine Show?

[SossFarm]

Doing some shopping at the Local Tractor Supply on Saturday and one of the "Chicken Ladies" suggested we get a couple of Black Hens. She said that Hawks, Eagles and other birds of Prey would think they were Crows, and leave the flock alone. Has anyone else had experience with this "Medicine Show"? Does it work? Or is this their attempt to sell more black chickens? I mean, I have been wanting some Barred Rocks! LOL

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I think its a myth. Birds of prey have great eyesight. They ought to be abble to tell the difference between a crow and a black chicken by appearance over great distance. The science therefore proves the hypothesis to be very suspect.

Someone once had a good experience free ranging black chickens, and there’s probably a hawk or two out there that by individual personality have been weirded out a black chicken for any number of reasons, and that’s where the myth comes from.

I don’t fault someone for hypothesizing why a particular thing happens with their flock. I do that all the time. Sometimes I get more data that ends up proving my original idea wrong. But I think the “black chicken = crow” myth is one of those hypothesis that quickly turned into an urban legend via social media.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

since chickens are not native and many hawks do not even know what they are.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, I just think its a worth-while debate. So please don’t take offense to my disagreement.

As to this point I would respectfully disagree for two reasons. First, it seems like many predators that are still around today are generally good at quickly adapting to new prey. Many or most domesticated animals aren’t native to the Americas. It doesn’t stop predators from quickly taking advantage of them. For example, I recently had occasion to research jaguar predation on cattle in South America. Generally, domestic cattle make up about 32% of a jaguar’s overall diet in the study-range, and 7% of all domestic livestock losses in South America are from jaguars and pumas. So those cats have quickly adapted to introduced prey items.

Second, wild turkeys are basically North America’s woods chickens. There are many birds of prey in NA that prey on sub adult and adult wild turkeys. For example, northern goshawks regularly kill adult turkey hens. So they already have a proclivity to prey on large galliforms. A chicken might as well be a small turkey to them.

Along those lines, wild turkeys can throw all sorts of color variants. Yet natural selection hasn’t favored the unnatural color variants. If predators were generally weirded out by the off colors, the off color birds should survive at a high rate and reinforce their colors into the wild population. There are faint color differences between different groups of wild turkeys across NA, but its a matter of them being darker in this habitat or lighter in that habitat. The color ranges between them aren’t dramatic. Just likely tweaked according to which colors are most camouflaged for the habitat in question.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I believe people correctly observe that various black chicken breeds survive well on free range. They’re just drawing the wrong conclusion as to why. Many black chickens have within their background rustic breeds that are simply good survivors.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Hawks still come here and attack, though to this day they're unable to catch any of the black chickens. Only offspring of a non-camouflaged color are vulnerable to hawks

I think you’re probably hitting right on why the myth seems to be true sometimes. Various black breeds may simply be alert and agile due to their genetics, and their black color may link to those other genes that encourage wildness, or may simply be present by coincidence.

I am also aware of an experiment done by an American biologist decades ago where he created a feral “woods” chicken in the river bottoms of the Savanah River by allowing barnyard bantam breeds to cross with red junglefowl hybrids and then letting natural selection cull anything that couldn’t live on its own. The result was a mostly black bird. It is my experience that mottled black blends into North American Southern, hardwood-bottom habitat better than the red junglefowl’s natural partridge color. I’ve turned black bantams loose in my own swamp hardwood habitat and they become invisible when they don’t move and have some overhead underbrush breaking up their outline.

Black chickens may simply be of genetic stocks of breeds that are better free range survivors.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

If that first attempt goes wrong then that hawk will never be driven to hunt down a chicken again.

No, they'll try again. Otherwise within a couple generations ,you could have a whole hawk population that never preys on chickens. Remember, even hunting 'natural' prey, hawks (and especially juviniles learning to hunt) don't have a perfect success rate. If they stopped after failing each first hunt, they'd run out of food options. Remember that whole 'if at first you dont succeed, try, try, try again' lesson we were always taught as children?

 

[MysteryChicken]

None of my black chickens ever gotten snagged by birds of prey. I've had a Guinea hen get attacked, & partly eaten by an unknown Raptor. This was literally my only bird kill by a bird of prey.

 

[Alexandra Runner]

Doing some shopping at the Local Tractor Supply on Saturday and one of the "Chicken Ladies" suggested we get a couple of Black Hens. She said that Hawks, Eagles and other birds of Prey would think they were Crows, and leave the flock alone. Has anyone else had experience with this "Medicine Show"? Does it work? Or is this their attempt to sell more black chickens? I mean, I have been wanting some Barred Rocks! LOL

Do you have a lot of crows in your area? I do, and I've never had problems with raptors, despite not having black chickens.

That being said, I don't think the whole 'Black Chicken' works. Predators are smarter than that! Plus, my local crows and my chickens DO NOT get along. The crows (named Tom and Sawyer for their peevishness, thievery, and general nuisancy - I've threatened to bean them with my slingshot multiple times for dropping things at me), used to stand outside my fence and mercilessly tease my rooster Jack. My new rooster, Matthew, has wisely learned to ignore them!

 

[GirlsHuntToo]

I think its a myth. Birds of prey have great eyesight. They ought to be abble to tell the difference between a crow and a black chicken by appearance over great distance. The science therefore proves the hypothesis to be very suspect.

Someone once had a good experience free ranging black chickens, and there’s probably a hawk or two out there that by individual personality have been weirded out a black chicken for any number of reasons, and that’s where the myth comes from.

I don’t fault someone for hypothesizing why a particular thing happens with their flock. I do that all the time. Sometimes I get more data that ends up proving my original idea wrong. But I think the “black chicken = crow” myth is one of those hypothesis that quickly turned into an urban legend via social media.

I have found the opposite to be true, and that hawks go after black chickens. I have had 3 hawk attacks, all of them on Barred Rocks.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I have found the opposite to be true, and that hawks go after black chickens. I have had 3 hawk attacks, all of them on Barred Rocks.

I sometimes lose black chickens to hawks. Sometimes I lose natural, partridge-colored, chickens to hawks. And I have several hens of those colors and others that seem to be hawk-proof. Some of my best free-rangers have been white. I aggressively cull against white, but that’s only because I find their feathers to be an eyesore in my yard when they molt.

I believe the alertness and speed of the chicken has a lot more to do with avoiding hawk predation than the chicken’s color. My flock is seasoned enough that I generally don’t lose adult birds to raptors anymore unless the bird is sick. I can look at a bird showing signs of sickness and predict its loss to a hawk within a couple of days. In a flock of athletic chickens, alert, chickens that are well-educated to hawk tactics, losses are weighted towards birds that have something wrong with them.