White-tailed eagle killed in West Sussex with dangerous banned pesticide

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
As many on here will know, I've kept hawks (for falconry) for many years. The traditional way of keeping them is by tethering to a perch. The problem is, I also keep poultry on free range! How was that going to work? How could I keep the hens safe?

Then I read in an old book that falconers back in the 16th century had a similar problem with many cottagers and small land owners keeping poultry. Trained hawks found chickens easy and tempting targets so, if left to it, they often preferred them to game.

They solved this one by waiting until a hawk had started to eat the hen it had caught, then quietly going up to it and sprinkling pepper on the freshly opened corpse. I think they chose pepper because it was all they had back then! Well, I tried it. It worked! My chickens could forage within range of the hawks who were now not interested in a chicken dinner as they were convinced they tasted revolting!

I don't know whether sprinkling some noxious substance on newly borne lambs would keep the predators at bay but it might be worth a try. I am sure it has been tried. I'd suggest something like powdered paprika or something hot (I am no culinary expert!). Any thoughts on this?
 

Radio

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Radnorshire
As many on here will know, I've kept hawks (for falconry) for many years. The traditional way of keeping them is by tethering to a perch. The problem is, I also keep poultry on free range! How was that going to work? How could I keep the hens safe?

Then I read in an old book that falconers back in the 16th century had a similar problem with many cottagers and small land owners keeping poultry. Trained hawks found chickens easy and tempting targets so, if left to it, they often preferred them to game.

They solved this one by waiting until a hawk had started to eat the hen it had caught, then quietly going up to it and sprinkling pepper on the freshly opened corpse. I think they chose pepper because it was all they had back then! Well, I tried it. It worked! My chickens could forage within range of the hawks who were now not interested in a chicken dinner as they were convinced they tasted revolting!

I don't know whether sprinkling some noxious substance on newly borne lambs would keep the predators at bay but it might be worth a try. I am sure it has been tried. I'd suggest something like powdered paprika or something hot (I am no culinary expert!). Any thoughts on this?
Some Shepherds on the hills round here riaddle the neck and back of lambs day old to try and prevent foxes, grabbing them. Not sure how successful and you will only be able to catch a few lambs, but at least you tried.
 

puppet

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
sw scotland
As many on here will know, I've kept hawks (for falconry) for many years. The traditional way of keeping them is by tethering to a perch. The problem is, I also keep poultry on free range! How was that going to work? How could I keep the hens safe?

Then I read in an old book that falconers back in the 16th century had a similar problem with many cottagers and small land owners keeping poultry. Trained hawks found chickens easy and tempting targets so, if left to it, they often preferred them to game.

They solved this one by waiting until a hawk had started to eat the hen it had caught, then quietly going up to it and sprinkling pepper on the freshly opened corpse. I think they chose pepper because it was all they had back then! Well, I tried it. It worked! My chickens could forage within range of the hawks who were now not interested in a chicken dinner as they were convinced they tasted revolting!

I don't know whether sprinkling some noxious substance on newly borne lambs would keep the predators at bay but it might be worth a try. I am sure it has been tried. I'd suggest something like powdered paprika or something hot (I am no culinary expert!). Any thoughts on this?
When my brother was 2 he used to chew small stones and my mother thought he would choke. She offered him one with English Mustard on it. Seemed to cure the behaviour just like your birds.
She would probably be referred to Social Work these days.
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
Foals often get a taste for their mate's manes and tails. I have a pot of home brew consisting of industrial vaseline and paprika that gets daubed on them. The fun part is watching for their expressions when they finally taste a mouthful! But it does stop them. The commercial stuff is called Cribox, but it costs more.
 

Paddington

Member
Location
Soggy Shropshire
We tried the old trick of putting mustard inside a blown hen's egg to stop hens eating eggs, don't think it actually worked and we resorted to putting pot eggs in the nest boxes to confuse the culprits. Years later, a poultry expert at a talk explained that hens did not have the same taste receptors as humans and would not experience the mustard hotness.
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
We tried the old trick of putting mustard inside a blown hen's egg to stop hens eating eggs, don't think it actually worked and we resorted to putting pot eggs in the nest boxes to confuse the culprits. Years later, a poultry expert at a talk explained that hens did not have the same taste receptors as humans and would not experience the mustard hotness.
That is interesting. Hawks have a very fine sense of taste. They response to call much better when calling off to tasty (to a hawk!) meat like warm pigeon, duck, or game rather than the soggy cold day old chicks many novices feed their birds on! But they don't seem to have a sense of smell, whereas birds like vultures apparently do (I think!). (Now that's got me wondering. Do waders find their food in mud by smell or feel?). The tens of thousands of petals that fall from my wild cherry tree would all be picked up by the hens if I had them loose. It is like snow here just now.
 
We had this bird stay on the farm for a couple of days over lambing last year, it was incredible to see. There are a few of them who have fledged off the Isle of White and come over to the main land.

We saw one near shaftesbury a couple of months ago, huge birds,

I've seen them in the wild in Norway, they look like flying barn doors.

Rightly or wrongly, we don't have untouched native pristine habitat in the UK where apex predators can live and breed without adversely impacting people and the economy.
 

bluebell

Member
If ever food becomes important? to everyone in the UK again ? all this bird protection, badger protection, tree planting , set aside, have i missed anything will be screamed down by the public demanding food food food ?
 
If ever food becomes important? to everyone in the UK again ? all this bird protection, badger protection, tree planting , set aside, have i missed anything will be screamed down by the public demanding food food food ?

Unlikely, because for the last 40 years the public have been fed a Disneyfied alternative reality of what goes on in the countryside, painting fluffy foxes, badgers, deer etc as the good guys and any farmer/farm worker/landowner/gamekeeper as the bad guys.

The champagne socialists (Moonbat, Shrub's-hole etc) who have driven this ideology with enormous help from the Beeb and the Guardian will not care one bit if food becomes less affordable for working people.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Unlikely, because for the last 40 years the public have been fed a Disneyfied alternative reality of what goes on in the countryside, painting fluffy foxes, badgers, deer etc as the good guys and any farmer/farm worker/landowner/gamekeeper as the bad guys.

The champagne socialists (Moonbat, Shrub's-hole etc) who have driven this ideology with enormous help from the Beeb and the Guardian will not care one bit if food becomes less affordable for working people.
it is all very well blaming the BBC and the Guardian, but I think you are ignoring the fact that we have a had Conservative government for the last 12 years which has done far more to promote this Disneyfication than any other government in my memory , which to be fair is nearly forever;).
I hate to point out also that us Remainers, warned the danger we would face from this on leaving Europe with its far higher numbers of people working the land and having a tie to the countryside. Now we have a government which is dominated by both the environmental lobby at the heart of it and surrounded on the back benches by globalist MP's.Sadly the old MP's with a large country estate who had a genuine desire to see the peasants make good money ( so they can pay high rents and not worry too much about the pheasants ) are long gone to be replaced by your upstarts fresh from their job as a Commons researcher whose only interest is garnering votes off the great unwashed.
Possibly this is why some on here are still defending Vlad since his actions in the Ukraine are beginning to make the government wake up to the crisis we are facing on so many fronts , but especially food and energy
 

bluebell

Member
i agree with what Exfarmer says, but would also add that another big change in the general publics view of the countryside and the farming of it? is the massive change of the type of people that now live or want to live in the countryside? in the not to distant past, 1960-70s my village, when i was growing up, like i would imagine most others, was populated with alot of people who either had worked in agriculture or were employed in it either directly or indirectly? Not any more?
 
i agree with what Exfarmer says, but would also add that another big change in the general publics view of the countryside and the farming of it? is the massive change of the type of people that now live or want to live in the countryside? in the not to distant past, 1960-70s my village, when i was growing up, like i would imagine most others, was populated with alot of people who either had worked in agriculture or were employed in it either directly or indirectly? Not any more?
Indeed, in my lifetime rural houses have gone from small cottages lived in by the poorer in the community to being lived in by those on better incomes who have moved out of the built up areas and more often than not greatly extended these properties, so that in my lifetime they have gone from the cheaper end of the property market to the more expensive end
 

toquark

Member
Indeed, in my lifetime rural houses have gone from small cottages lived in by the poorer in the community to being lived in by those on better incomes who have moved out of the built up areas and more often than not greatly extended these properties, so that in my lifetime they have gone from the cheaper end of the property market to the more expensive end
The changing demographics of the countryside is something which is rarely mentioned but instrumental to how land use policy has evolved. The move by the affluent middle classes to the countryside often after several generations of living in cities has, I believe, driven a lot of what politicians have thrown our way. Today we have wealthy, politically active people who can write a good letter and know which levers to pull in order to get their way living in every village and at the bottom of every field. They often move to an area, promptly capture the parish council, local committees etc then steamroller the "indigenous" rural population's views (or even more maddeningly, claim to represent those views).

It probably goes some way to explaining the current direction of travel in the Tory party, long gone are the traditional landowning classes who understood the countryside and its ways to be replaced by essentially urban liberal metropolitan types who have moved from Chiswick to Chipping Norton.
 

bluebell

Member
its been done down in cornwall and documented , a wealty ? incommer stopped a fishing boat, operate outside his new? home because he didnt like it?
 
its been done down in cornwall and documented , a wealty ? incommer stopped a fishing boat, operate outside his new? home because he didnt like it?
Cornwall is rife with emmets that have moved down hell bent on creating what they left behind or trying to stop the rest of us making a living 😠 we have one who bought a local old mill and now keeps trying to shut the road besides it 😱
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
It probably goes some way to explaining the current direction of travel in the Tory party, long gone are the traditional landowning classes who understood the countryside and its ways to be replaced by essentially urban liberal metropolitan types who have moved from Chiswick to Chipping Norton.

That nails it.

My old man has a theory that urban liberal metropolitan types have screwed up the towns and cities to such a point that they decide to escape from what they've created. The problem is that they then attempt to do the same thing to the area they move to. Then the cycle repeats itself.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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