What will you do if you see bears in your area? Do bears eat chickens? Here is everything you need to know about bears. Keep reading to learn more.
The safety of chickens is a significant concern to all kitchen keepers. They protect their feathered friends from all the predators.
Do Bears Eat Chickens?
The answer is simple, yes. If bears break into your chicken coop, they’ll attack and eat your flock. We recommend taking the best preventive measures to keep the bears off your pen.
If you see a bear getting to your coop, never approach it, especially when it’s walking with its cubs. A mother bear will attack you when it feels her cubs are threatened.
Using a rubber bullet will be a proper way to send it away.
What Do Bears Eat?
Black bears are omnivores– they eat plants and animals, including roots, berries, fruits, meat, insects, fish, grass, and other plants.
Additionally, bears can kill moose, deer, elk, and any livestock, such as chickens and sheep.
Do Chickens Attract Bears?
When bears search for food, they might invade your backyard, not because they know you have chickens.
However, once they realize you have chickens in your coop, they’ll keep coming until there’s no one left. The Uninvited visits will be because your flock will be their food source.
In most cases, bears live in concealed areas. But, black bears can quickly adapt to urban life since these places provide adequate food.
Currently, many people are cutting down trees and building residential areas; bears are left with no place to look for food. As a result, they choose to invade the chicken keeper’s yards.
How Do Bears Kill?
Bears’ most excellent predatory edge is their augmented sense of smell– which acts as a guiding tool to their prey.
It’s perceived to have a more robust sense of smell than a dog or any other mammal.
Bears are fond of attacking and breaking the fences to gain access to your yard when looking for food to munch on.
Unlike other predators who will roost until no one is within the visit to launch an attack on the flock. This mainly happens when he sees its favorite prey.
With gained access, bears will eat as many chickens as possible using their whetted talons.
We highly recommend installing a solid fence; it might be electric and hard chicken wire to deter the bears from entering your coop.
How To Keep Bears Away From Your chickens
In your yard, food, water, and shelter attract bears. They’ll visit your yard when looking for them. When their instincts tell them your coop is where they can find food, water, and shelter.
They have incredible strength and can break through fencing if all they want is food. It can be tough to keep them off.
If you have a poorly designed and maintained chicken coop, bears will tear it off to get chickens from inside.
The best line of defense is preventing the bears from knowing what’s inside. We have discussed the simple steps to consider while deterring bears and other predators from accessing your property.
Keeping Yard Clean
Keep your yard tidy and secure your litter bin. Close the dustbin properly. Chicken keepers consider this step as the first line of defense.
Disposing of the garbage won’t attract bears. It can be a good idea not to leave the garbage cans outside– lock them inside the garage or in a spare room.
Bears eat fruits and are one of the most attractive. If bears get attracted to eating fruits from your garden, they might be tempted to check out your coop.
Don’t put them near your chicken coop if you have a garden.
Keeping The Chicken Coop Food-free
Avoid feeding your chickens inside a coop. Bears’ strong sense of smell, even if the feeds are inside the enclosure, can tempt them to confirm what’s inside.
In the end, the bears will turn out to eat your flock.
Prefer feeding your flock on the run, properly clean the leftovers, and dispose of them well.
If your chicken can eat whatever has remained, don’t leave the feed outside at night. Instead, store them properly in your storage room.
Note that when bears get the leftovers, they will still remember where they found them and will come back again when feeling hungry.
Lock Up Your Barbecue Grill
Bears love eating meat! Some chicken keepers have a barbecue grill at home for cooking/roasting meat.
After using the grill, move it away from your chicken coop. Alternatively, lock up the grill in a storage room.
If you don’t have any safe place to store your grill, use ammonia to clean the grill. It helps remove meat’s smell.
Used charcoal pieces can be indicators of roasted meat. Remember to collect and lock them safely in the trash can. Put the trash can inside a storage room during the night as well.
Proper Food Storage
Proper food storage– animal feeders, bird feeders, and items like fertilizer and oil are essential in keeping off predators.
Ensure they are well kept so that bears can not smell. Also, put these foods about 10 feet off the ground and far away from your chicken coop.
Remove Bee Hives
Predators such as raccoons, skunks, bears, and mice get attracted to honey.
Even though chickens like eating bees and wasps, consider putting the beehives far away from your chicken coop.
They will do anything to get inside if they realize you have a beehive.
Motion Sensor Lights
Motion-activated sensor lights are the best deterrents to scare away bears. If a bear wanders near your coop, its motion activates the LED lights.
There is a high chance that the light will startle the bear away. While using this preventive tip, you should avoid any problems with bears.
Enclose Your Compost Pile
The compost pile attracts bears. Many chicken and livestock keepers have a compost pile, especially if they want to grow a worm farm.
On the other hand, chickens like to forage in the compost pile, where there are always plenty of earthworms.
Keeping the compost pile far from your coop will help discourage the bears. We recommend enclosing it.
What Should I Do If A Bear Attacks Your Chickens
If you find your coop torn in pieces, with some eggs and chickens missing, there will be a high probability that it will invade your yard. Read on!
If you have employed the above preventive measures and still you can’t manage to keep the predators away, here are a few other options.
Catch the bears using rubber bullets in your yard. Rubber bullets have a painful impact without harming the bear and can signal a warning to a bear not to come back again.
Wildlife service managers opt to use this method when other techniques fail.
However, check your country’s laws because, in some cases, killing bears is illegal.
Alternatively, installing an electric fence is the most effective way to keep away the bears.
They can climb trees but can be electrocuted when they try to get near the wires.
The impact will also send out the bears and never come back.
If you still have a challenge keeping the bears away, it will be better to call a wildlife control team to take care of them.
They will remove and relocate the bears without causing any harm. Honestly, you’ll get rid of the problem permanently.
When the wild control teams remove all the bears within your locality, ensure that you don’t attract them again.
Above all, take all the precautionary measures to secure your chickens.
Conclusion
If bears are attracted to your yard, they’ll eat your chickens. When they decide to invade, there’s little you can do to prevent them from tearing down your chicken coop.
However, there are several preventive measures you can take to keep off bears and other predators from your yard.
Bears are omnivores–they eat meat and plants. Besides chickens, they hunt moose, elk, deer, sheep, and other livestock.
We recommend following the tips discussed above to deter bears from accessing your chicken coop.
The first line of defense is cleanliness. Your yard and the areas around your chicken coop must be tidy.
Clean the leftovers, dispose of the garbage appropriately, lock the litter bins or keep them in a storage room or garage if you have one.
Also, set up your garden far from the yard, and put away bird feeders and anything that can attract bears.
Once bears find food in your yard, they’ll keep coming for more. They can be a threat to your flock.
An electric fence is one of the most effective ways to prevent bears out of your yard. It might be costly, but it’s the best method.
Using rubber bullets works better, too– the pain it causes can send away the bears for good.
If you have tried all the means but are still unsuccessful, we recommend contacting the wildlife control team to safely capture and relocate the bears.
