Our kestrel is catching his food

Kes is eating natural food now and is even catching it when I throw it for him.  It’s all part of teaching him to hunt and feed himself.   A kestrel is a small hawk and these are birds with excellent eyesight – I have to sneak into his aviary with a dead chick well hidden.  If he catches sight of it he swoops down at me to get it.  Those sharp talons and hooked beak would tear a hole in me instead of the chick if he landed!   He would have no sense of agression towards me but a fierce determination to get his prey and keep hold of it.

I watch for the moment and then throw the chick into the cage that was his first home when he was a tiny fledgling.  I’ve purposely left it in the aviary with him and have been training him to go into it for food.   That way I can (hopefully) fasten him in when I want to move him.   If I tried to catch him he would be very stressed and I don’t want to do that.   He is going into a larger pen with more room to fly in a few days time.  It’s all gradual stages to get him fit and fully reared before I release him into the wild.

Why do I give him dead chicks?   No, I’m not a baby chick killer – these can be bought frozen by the kilo (a bag of day old chicks please).  It always strikes me as sad and gruesome but it’s the reality of the poultry industry.   Hens mostly lay eggs that will hatch into male birds.  Always more boys than girls in practically every species of animals.  If you breed horses you’ll get more colts than fillies.   Cows produce more wye (female) calves than bulls and if a hen sits a clutch of eggs and hatches them there’ll be seven or eight cocks to three or four hens.

What do boys like to do when they grow up?   Yes, they fight – there can only be one alpha male.  One stallion in the herd and one cockerel in the farmyard.   If cockerels are reared with their brothers they do sometimes stay friendly but that is only when there are no hens around.   Then they kill each to have all the hens for themselves.   So poultry breeders cannot keep the male chicks.   It isn’t profitable and no one wants to rear cockerels who are always fighting instead of putting weight on.

Chicks are sexed as soon as they hatch and the male ones are killed straight away.   So as not to waste them they are frozen and sold for pet food – dead day old chicks go to feed birds of prey and reptiles.   Our Kes is getting through two a day now, a bigger bird will eat more.