Question about cats

I let my chickens out into the garden today for the first time.  One of my cats walked around with them, sniffed them, sat with them,  watched them like he was guarding them etc.  All was totally fine.

Amanda

yup, my neighbours dog killed one of our girls. she got in over another neighbours garden, so i agree with tode. we had blocke the enrty from her garden and thought we were safe

Highly unlikely that the cat will win - unless he is starving ... but he might spend a while trying to figure them out.  If he is a full male it might take longer as he takes it as a challenge; neuters and girls are more inclined to shrug their (metephorical) shoulders at the weird birds and get on with life/sleeping.

Cats are no problem for a chicken, even young male hunters like our two 6 month old kittens.

A very funny thing happened not so long ago when we had  a couple of nights away.  During the day before we left the kittens had discovered how to get onto the top of the hen house (the house is in a run with weldmesh sides and birdnetting roof) the kittens had climbed up the weldmesh and gingerly crossed a two foot stretch of birdnetting and got onto the roof.  They looked a bit worried but I managed to get them off.   Guess what I found when we returned from our break - the kittens had both fallen through the birdmesh and spent two nights in the hen house   what is worse we have an auto pop hole closer so they had been trapped inside with the hens at night.

No harm done to any of them but the kittens were hungry.  It has made me more concerned about how easily a fox would get in though.

A practical example ?

here [url]

The quality is none too good, but it's a super little film, isn't it?

So don't worry too much Debsie     

Brilliant, that hen was so tolerant