Re: Cats & Chickens

The thing I find about cats is that they’re pretty intelligent animals, and once they realize that a small animal is a pet, they usually don’t bother it.

I do own a cat - a big, burly, bird-eating cat - along with my three chickens (one of which is a wee chick). The cat and the chickens chill together on a regular basis.

When I first got the my newest chick, I held a formal introduction where-by I let the cat check out the tiny bird under highly supervised conditions. If the cat made any quick movements towards the bird, he got a light swat on the nose (a spray bottle also works). I made sure the cat saw me repeatedly handle and interact with the bird. Within a week or two, the cat and chick were hanging out in my mudroom together without any kind of cage between them. Just yesterday, I was planting some onions and both cat and chicken were six inches apart watching what I was doing.

The one time gato has shown any kind of aggression towards the chickens, it was definately not an I-want-to-eat-you kind of interaction. It was more territorial, where the chickens got too close and he hissed and swatted at them. The chickens made a loud noise, ran about five feet away and then proceeded scratching. The cat went back to sleep.

Also once a chicken gets to full size, I feel it’s too big for most cats to want to deal with. Our neighbor’s cats have half-heartedly chased, but never were able to get close to my full-grown girls. Of course if you have a feral cat in your neighborhood, they play by different rules, so make sure to pen the chickens up at night. One of the women I interviewed lost her entire adult flock to a bruiser cat in her neighborhood - one chicken day for about a week. Another interviewee had two cats who didn’t care one way or another about his chickens.

Of course, this has only been my experience - as I wrote in the articles, chickens are LOW on the food chain. But your own cats should be the least of your worries.