Oh my! That’s crazy. I didn’t know bears actually go after chickens. Was he after eggs?
I just got goslings (I have chickens, too), and goslings are eager to go out and graze. They are too small to intimidate anything at the moment.
What I did was get an old trampoline and put a wire skirt around that. The tramp surface protects them from any overhead dangers, and the wire skirt keeps ground level dangers at bay. I don’t leave them out there a long time, but I can leave them out there as I do other things in the yard.
I can move this around the property easily. You could do the same with a 10X10 “easy up” canopy. I think it’s a reasonable compromise.
My chickens have a coop, a small 12 x 18 wired pen, inside an approx 40X60 pen, inside the yard which is fully fenced (but old, and probably has gaps.) We have lost 2 chickens to fox, but we plugged that hole last year and haven’t had a problem with them since. Earlier than the fox, I lost a young chicken to a hawk. Most of the others were smart enough to hide under bushes when the hawks are out.
I have way more eggs than I can use. 7 chickens, 2 of which don’t lay.
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Bears absolutely go after chickens! They’ll certainly eat eggs and chicken feed, but they want the chickens.
Some neighbors of ours who have had chickens for some decades have lost them at least four times to bears (black bears). The last time my husband and I were actually sitting for them (chickens-sheep-plants). They had moved the chickens to their winter quarters in the barn, a 10’x10’ space, so that we would not have to let them out from their coop into the run in the morning and lock them away at night. Because it was summer we were leaving the barn doors open. My husband went over one morning to find that something had ripped through the 1” boards that formed the bottom few feet of the front of the quarters. All the chickens (5?) were dead or gone. That was it, no more chickens for them.
The first time, when they were new to chickens, a bear ripped through the side (very thin aluminum roofing) of a chicken tractor. They did well for years after that but eventually a bear came by just at dusk when they had had the run’s electric fence turned off for the day and had not yet turned it on for the night. A year or two after that a bear took all their hens from the coop attached to that run by ripping through the wood siding during the night.
The best protection against bears is an electric fence, and many state wildlife departments have information about this on their websites, including videos of bears raiding coops.
My parents gave up any sort of livestock other than horses and steers because of all the troubles they were running into with bears.
I walked up the hill one afternoon to find mama bear and two cubs inside the run. It was a massacre. They were just grabbing birds, taking a bite, grabbing another bird, etc.
The bee hives were surrounded by electric fence, a mid day thunderstorm knocked the power out and within about an hour a bear had destroyed them.
They’re very clever animals.
I never thought about bears and chickens! Glad that’s not in issue in my area.
I used to work at a summer camp in the mountains in the 90s. I walked in on bears in the feed room too many times! They loved sweet feed. Occasionally they would get the chest freezer open (if someone forgot to padlock it) and have a feast.
What we do with our chickens is they are safely contained in their predator proof (the types we have, a bear could probably rip it open) coop and enclosure with a roof all except for some time in the evening when we are out there doing other things. (This is when we clean, while they are out doing stuff.)
We do have a fox, that knows we have birds, that has gotten some birds when we have been careless and left them out while we went inside to do other things.
Our girls are meal worm bag trained. Shake the bag and toss some worms inside their area and they come running (so cute) and go inside to get their treats.
I have our empty chicken house and run cleaned and the hole that the bobcat came through fixed. The DH, who previously was the chicken dad, has not been involved. He was pretty traumatized by the mass murder situation. The first six chickens arrive on the 26th. Looking forward to them arriving.
We have had a bear, looking at the chicken coop/run. But unable to get in. Wishing he could get in, but couldn’t. He ran away when we yelled at him, and never came back. We’ve had a juvenile cougar, who did get into a small, auxillary pen we had next to the main pen for a couple of new, young chickens we had just acquired. He tore the pen apart, killed two out of three. He showed no fear of humans, and was shot as a result. Which was a pity, we felt bad for him. Predators who are not naturally afraid of humans are short lived.
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Wow!
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That’s scary! My husband has beehives. They are currently inside the electrified fence of the horses’ winter paddock but that fence is not designed to stop bears. The plan was (is?) to attach electric strands to the dog kennel within which the hives sit, and I keep pushing him to do that, but I think he wants me to do it. I will supervise/show him how, but I already installed his llama fences as well as all the horse fences (all electrified polyrope), plus built the winter coop and finished his llama run-innshed (after his nephews erected it) mostly by myself and I really can’t do everything for him.
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I’ve got hives and chickens at my house (about an hour from bear central, aka my parent’s farm). I’m probably tempting fate by not having everything surround by electric. But knock on wood I haven’t had any predator issues in the five years we’ve been at this property. Bears are the only thing that would be able to bust into chicken Fort Knox.
SO had a trail cam set up back in the bush on the game trail that goes by the pond. Only one bear on camera in five years, one moose, lots of deer, lots of coyotes, some turkeys, and lots of very fat raccoons.
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When we had a trail cam out in the surrounding woods it caught plenty of bear, as well as the other usual suspects (coyotes, deer, fox etc.). Last summer our neighbors texted us to say a bear was practically in their backyard demolishing a rotten tree stump, presumably for the grubs.
But knock on wood they seem to stay away from our yard (to such an extent that we need to cart off our wormy dropped apples), which we credit to our dog, a 65-pound presumably lab cross who regularly barks at the woods.
We have even started free ranging our chickens and so far so good though we know we are pushing our luck - as a resident fox may be hungry enough at some point to test whether the dog is out or if it is safe for him to snag a chicken dinner.
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No, he killed and ate the birds. He came back for 3 nights before we were able to deal with the problem. He totally avoided the trap that fish and game set and we ended up dealing with it ourselves. With full support and knowledge of the fish and game department. I will say the spring bear is rather tasty 
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My parents had kept birds on this property for over 50 years and this was the first bear issue. It was a black bear as well.
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One of our hens is broody. It’s made the rooster even more obnoxious. I don’t know if she’ll stick with it, but that would save us from buying an incubator. When she gets close, I’ll watch carefully to see if she needs to be separated. As much of a pain in the butt the rooster is, if he does his job and reacts well to any chicks, that would be ideal.
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I thought the COTH chicken people might find this interesting;
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My second box of chicks arrived today. Fricken post office…they were in the mail for three days and I have dead ones 
Makes me feel guilty for ordering them.
I’ve had chickens for 30+ years now. Right at this moment I’ve got 18 four-day-old chicks in a brooder in the cellar, seven 1 and 3 year old layers, one old hen who is dying slowly, and one broody hen sitting on some Breda (rare Dutch chicken breed) eggs – they’re for a rare-breed chicken breeder friend who had run out of room in her incubator.
I have had all kinds of chickens but I have settled on a colorful mix of dual purpose breeds which lay large eggs and have small combs, because big combs get frostbite here. Dual purpose because there are a lot of calm friendly breeds among them, not because I eat old hens. Flighty chickens are a pain.
My big improvements in chicken-keeping since I moved here five years ago are:
- a very roomy 10x12’ coop that is truly predator-proof top to bottom. It’s a repurposed goat shed we added a perimeter foundation and a soil-cement floor to, along with windows, air flow, and a tight door.
- I bed with gravelly sand, not shavings, and clean it every morning.
- I have a heated chicken drinker with chicken-activated spigots from Premier One, my go-to supplier.
- I have a treadle chicken feeder (Grandpa’s Feeders from Australia I scored on craigslist) that keeps wild birds and rats out of the feed.
My hens free range when I’m around but if I get lazy, inevitably someone gets snagged by the many predators we have. Currently it’s a fox. I use Electranet chicken netting to rotate their grazes.
I hope never to be without chickens.
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This is why “my breed” is Barred Rocks. I have some Leghorn pullets and they are already driving me crazy, freaking out every time I walk by. I hate that.
So the feed store that was going to be bringing in the chickens, that I paid for in advance, phoned to say that there are no chickens coming in. No explanation. Multiple "sorry"s. I think they did get one or two shipments previous to the load that MINE were coming on, but no more. My credit card account is credited with the charge. But I still have NO chickens. So, I called a local woman who I know has chickens, and has an incubator, and am attempting to cajole her into letting me have at least a few. I have excess seed potatoes as partial trade!!! Don’t count your chickens until you have them home in your own coop.
I get mine mail order from Myer Hatchery. This year they came next day after shipping! Murray MacMurray is also good.
This year: Dominiques, Speckled Sussex, Easter Eggers (they’re a hybrid). Other breeds in my wheelhouse: Buckeye, Australorp, Wyandotte, Orpington. I like Plymouth Rocks but prefer the comb on the similar Dominiques (they were once the same breed). All of them gentle calm birds.
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