highroller
60 posts
Dec 05, 2004
4:05 PM
|
For those of you who use a kit of non performing or poorer performing birds as a hawk bait kit to save your good birds.....how do you work that? Do you fly the poor ones and if none get taken then fly the good kit? Or do you only fly the good ones after one of the bait birds gets taken?
I have tried flying my bait birds and if no hawks attack I fly the good ones. But every time I fly the good ones the hawks attack even though the poor ones were just out with no attacks. I'm thinking maybe I should not fly the good kit at all if no poor ones get taken, is this the way it works?
Dan
|
Keith
7 posts
Dec 06, 2004
10:36 AM
|
I have locked down my best (19) birds. I am still flying a kit of (16) birds that is a combination of my latest hatch birds in August and earlier birds that are slow to come into the roll. I will continue to pull any bird that shows me anything until I get to (22) in the lock down team. I just pulled one yesterday. So far I have been lucky and have only lost a few to the predators.
I would rather have a KIT to compete with next year than fly with the predators, so as much I hate not seeing my good birds fly, I wont risk them at this time of year.
Keith
|
highroller
62 posts
Dec 06, 2004
3:39 PM
|
I had my good kit locked down for 5 or 6 weeks too and was not seeing hawks anymore so I tried to get them back into flying condition and get them out once a week. I guess I really just need to lock them down for the season and just fly the #2 kit. I've got 22 I want to save and 16 left in kit #2.
Dan
Last Edited by highroller on Dec 06, 2004 3:40 PM
|
J_Star
100 posts
Dec 07, 2004
5:42 AM
|
let me add to the problem the hawks are attracted to the rollers is not just because of the performance they put out. In addition because we regulate the feed and want them to slow their wing beat to fly like butterfly, makes them slow flyers and easy for the hawks to catch them. It might help a bit to put them on a regular pigeon mix for this time of year and have them race around a bit along with some performance to allow them to evade the hawks when attacked.
Another reason is because the rollers keep on circulating around their home to come down even when attacked, while commies tend to fly away and not hang around for more attacks. This makes the hawks to wait around for the rollers to come down again and again when they are not successful from the first or second attempt. If we can teach our birds to use the strategy of the commies to flay away and hide for an hour or so b4 comming back will most likely help.
What was funny is yesterday I was leaving work in the downtown area. In the first floor of the parking garage I stumbled on a hawk eating a city pigeon in between two parked cars. I was about 15 feet away from him. When he realized that I was watching him, he flew away. They seam to tear their catch from the crop down..As long as they are far away from my birds, they can hunt all they want of the city pigeons. There are lots of them and they can keep the population down. I wish all hawks move to US downtowns and leave the suburbs alone.
Violates Posting Policy
Jay
Last Edited by on May 26, 2007 6:13 PM
|
