Talk chickens long enough at any feed store between Lufkin and Jasper and somebody will tell you two things. Black hens don’t get taken by hawks the way the white ones do. And if you’ve got crows on the place, leave them be — they’re working for you.

I keep Black Plymouth Rock mixes out at Mountainview Ranch, and they do very well. We see hawks around the place. We also have a couple of families of crows in the pines nearby, and we haven’t had a hawk problem. There are owls, too, but the hens are locked behind automatic doors at night.

Maybe that’s the black feathers. Maybe it’s the crows. Maybe it’s luck. I wanted to know how much of it holds up. The short answer: the crow part has real science behind it. The black-chicken part is mostly what keepers have seen with their own eyes, and that counts for something, but it isn’t proof. And neither one replaces a covered run.

Who’s hunting your hens

Out here the daytime threats are the red-tailed hawk, the red-shouldered hawk and the Cooper’s hawk — the same three that extension poultry guides list as the most common hawks on backyard flocks. The red-tail is the big soaring bird you see on fence posts along 69. The red-shoulder likes our creek bottoms and wet woods. The Cooper’s is the one that does the damage. It’s built to fly fast through timber, and it’ll come in low and quick off a tree line before your hens know it’s there.

At night the job passes to the great horned owl.

One thing to settle up front: every one of those birds is protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. You can’t shoot, trap or poison a hawk or an owl for taking chickens without a federal permit, and the penalties are real. Everything below is about making your flock a harder target, not about getting rid of the hawk.

The black chicken question

Spend an evening on the big chicken-keeping forums and you’ll find this argument going back years. One keeper who turned game hens loose around his barns said the black birds were the ones still standing at the end of the season. Another wrote that in her flocks the white birds were hit most and the black ones hardly at all. Others say flatly it’s a myth — one woman keeps black Marans and the hawks take them anyway.

I couldn’t find a controlled study that settles it. What there is, is a reasonable idea about why it might happen.

A hawk hunts by sight. A white Leghorn on dark East Texas dirt or green Bermuda stands out from a long way off. A black hen in the shade under a sweetgum is harder to pick out. That’s contrast, not magic, and it only helps while the bird is in shade or on dark ground. A black hen standing in the middle of a sunny pasture is just as easy to see as any other.

So my take: black plumage might tip the odds a little. Nobody should pick a breed counting on it.

Black breeds worth a look

If you like the idea, there are good birds to choose from, and you won’t be giving up much to get one.

• Black Australorp. The best known of the bunch. In official Australian laying trials back in the 1920s, one hen laid 364 eggs in 365 days, and a team of six averaged better than 309 apiece. Your backyard birds won’t match that, but they’re steady layers of light brown eggs with a calm temper.
• Jersey Giant. Big, slow to mature, gentle. The black variety is the classic.
• Black Copper Marans. Known for very dark chocolate-brown eggs.
• Black Sex Link. A hatchery cross. Practical, productive and easy to find.
• Ayam Cemani. Black feathers, black skin, black comb. A conversation piece with a price tag to match.

The catch: East Texas heat

Here’s the part the forums don’t talk about enough. Black feathers soak up sun. Poultry guides list dark-feathered and heavy breeds among the birds most at risk of heat stress, and our summers bring the humidity that makes panting less effective.

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension poultry specialist Dr. Craig Coufal has said the three things that keep birds cool are shade from direct sun, access to cool water and plenty of air movement — and that birds should have shade at all times. On triple-digit days, he suggests ice in the water to keep them drinking.

If you go with black birds in Angelina or Polk County, shade isn’t optional. It’s the same shade that hides them from a hawk, so you get both jobs out of one tree line or one stretch of shade cloth. Just don’t use dark cloth, which holds heat over the run.

The crow question

This one has better footing.

Crows mobbing hawks is well documented. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology notes that American crows often mob red-shouldered hawks, and birders see crows harassing red-tails all the time — a gang of them calling, circling and dive-bombing until the hawk gives up and leaves. Crows go after great horned owls even harder when they find one roosting in daylight. Ornithologists think the point is to drive a predator out of the crows’ territory and to warn everything with ears that something dangerous is close by.

That warning is the real benefit for your flock. Keeper after keeper describes the same thing: the crows start that loud, specific racket, and the hens look up and head for cover. Some say their roosters have learned to read the crows and herd the hens under the coop before the hawk is even in sight.

There are some honest limits.

• Crows work best against red-tails. Several keepers report crows don’t bother much with Cooper’s hawks, the species that takes the most chickens. A few say blue jays do a better job harassing the small, quick hawks.
• Crows are opportunists. They’re very unlikely to bother an adult hen, but they’ll take eggs, and they’ll take a young chick if it’s easy. Keep chicks in a covered brooder or run until they’re a few months old, and collect eggs often.
• Feeding them can backfire. Some keepers put out scraps to keep a family of crows around. It can work. It can also teach them where the eggs are, and one keeper warned that a small crow family can draw a big winter roost into nearby trees.
• They’re protected, too. American crows fall under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Texas has a regulated crow hunting season, but if a crow is a problem, check the current Texas Parks and Wildlife rules before you do anything about it.

My advice: if crows already nest in your pines, consider yourself lucky and don’t run them off. Learn what their alarm call sounds like. If you hear thirty crows raising Cain in the tree line, go look.

What actually keeps hens alive

Black feathers and noisy neighbors are a bonus. These are the things that do the heavy lifting:

1. Cover the run. Extension guides call a covered run the easiest way to protect a flock from a persistent hawk or owl. Orange netting is a smart choice because hawks see orange well. Make sure it’s tight — a hawk will find a sag or a gap.
2. Give them somewhere to duck. Free-range hens need cover close by: shrubs, a raised coop they can get under, pallets set up on blocks. A hen that can reach cover in two seconds usually lives.
3. Take away the perches. A hawk likes a lookout. A lone dead tree or a tall post near the run is a hunting stand. Remove what you can.
4. Keep a good rooster. Not every rooster earns his feed, but a good one watches the sky, sounds the alarm and gathers the hens. Several keepers say a full-size rooster will run off a Cooper’s. None of them claim one can handle a red-tail.
5. Lock them up at dusk. Owls work at night. Hens on the roost inside a closed coop are out of reach. An automatic coop door takes the forgetting out of it — that’s how we handle the owls at the ranch.
6. Count them. A hawk often carries a young or small bird off and eats it somewhere else. The only sign is a missing hen. If you count every evening, you’ll know what you’re dealing with before you’ve lost three.

The bottom line

Pick black birds if you like them. They’re handsome, and the Australorp is about as good a layer as you can buy. Treat any hawk protection as a bonus, and give them deep shade come July.

Leave the crows alone. They’re the best free early-warning system in the Piney Woods.

Then build the covered run anyway.

If you keep a flock in Texas Forest Country and you’ve seen any of this firsthand — black birds that outlasted the rest, crows that ran a hawk off, or the reverse — tell us about it at info@texasforestcountryliving.com. We’d like to hear what’s working on your place.