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This remind me of a PlanetMoney episode from a while ago

> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/03/513302816/epis...

> Over time, though, Harris's worldview changed. He started to see the downside to the industrial farming ... To replace the chemical fertilizer, he brought in chickens and let them roam free. Free-range chickens would fertilize the grass; the grass would nurture the cattle, and shoppers at Whole Foods would love Harris's organic beef. ... But then, the eagles started to descend on Harris's farm. Eagles eat chicken. Eagles love chicken.

Since eagles are protected by law, the farmer wasn't allowed to hunt and clear the eagles from preying on his organic operation.

No good deed goes unpunished?

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Which is why you have dogs to protect your livestock.

I think people forget that man's best friend became that way by doing jobs for us. Want your cattle and chickens protected from wolves, fox, eagles, etc? Train some dogs to protect them.

Ah but you see that doesn't scale to industrial size non-industrial farming.

Are you actually aware of dogs protecting free-range chickens against bald eagles? I am not sure that bald eagles really care about dogs. A bald eagle will swoop down and snatch a chicken or even two and fly away without even landing.

That being said I think an even very loose "netting" that can consist of simply rope criss-crossing with certain gaps can sufficiently dissuade eagles and even other prey birds.

>Are you actually aware of dogs protecting free-range chickens against bald eagles?

At any given time I've got 3-5 bald eagles in the woods around my house. There are 3 houses with chickens in the neighborhood. The eagles won't go anywhere near a yard with a dog - I'm quite confident they aren't dumb enough to tangle with a large dog unless they have no other option for food.

I have no doubt if an eagle was starving to death it might tangle with the dog and might even win, but I don't think that would be their first, second, or fifth choice if there were other food options.

Livestock guardians as a general rule don't protect by fighting, but by convincing the predator that the risk is too high to bother. The guardian alerts and the flock reacts to the danger, seeking shelter, making noise, looking up, etc. Without an easy meal the predator moves on. Arial predators are especially risk-averse because it doesn't take much to cause a mortal injury.

I've even heard of people using guardian geese instead of dogs. They're supposed to be very effective at preventing arial predation and orders of magnitude cheaper than dogs, though I've never heard anyone talk about them in the context of something the size of a bald eagle.

I have guinea hens for pest mitigation and when the coyotes and/or hawks have picked off enough I just buy more. I pay about $2 each, it’s not worth getting a trained dog to watch over them, especially since coyotes and raptors do me a huge solid by keeping the cottontail population in check

You can adopt a dog from your local humane society for very little. When I say "train" I mean "find a dog that isn't going to eat your chickens or run away if you can't keep them in a fenced area".

Unless you've actually got cattle you need herded and protected from wolves, pretty much any mutt over 60lbs is going to be good enough to keep the predators away. They'll also be happy to help the rabbits if you let them.

Near the end of that podcast they talk about how Will Harris had evolved his farm to make money off the new flock of eagles that come to the farm:

> "But Will is resourceful, you know. He keeps trying to cross that gap. At one point as we're driving around the farm, we're next to this field with some chickens in it. And there's a pickup truck coming the other way. Will stops the Jeep to talk to the driver of the truck...."

> "In the bed of the truck, there's a guy with a camera with this giant telephoto lens, which is apparently pretty common. People now come to Will's farm to see the eagles. He had this special Eagle Day a few days before I was there. He's even built cabins for people to rent out."

The Biggest Little Farm[1] is a good documentary on this sort of topic. They started an organic farm and hit a similar pain point when coyotes started eating their chickens. They also had a problem with gophers eating their crops. I don't remember exactly but they were fighting the gophers with something, but it wasn't working that well. The solution was to let the gophers go wild, and the coyotes would take care of them instead of their chickens. They balanced each other out.

Now I don't know how this works with bald eagles, but there might be a similar solution for this.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8969332/

Can he use drones to scare them? Making noise and lights etc not kinetic force.

Eagles can take down small drones that invade their airspace. They are also used to being mobbed by smaller birds.

Eagles have actually been trialled as an anti-drone defence [0]. Although this isn't actually a good idea in the long run. A serious attacker could flood an eagle with a drone swarm, or make drones (e.g. explody, sharper blades) designed to hurt / kill eagles. It also takes considerable time and patience to train an eagle compared with the ease with which drones can be replaced.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-35750816

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