Free Range Chickens and Bald Eagles - High Cost of Organic Farming

An interesting read in Audubon Magazine about the impact of bald eagles on a free range chicken farm in Georgia.  Each year, this farm has an increasing number of bald eagles overwintering around the farm and feasting on high priced organic chicken.  There are now approximately 75 eagles, eating 3 or 4 chickens per day and costing the farm about $1000/day.  (Don't worry too much for the farm, the taxpayers pick up a good portion of that bill...and many of them don't even eat organic / free range chicken).

In addition to the loss by the eagles, free range farming has higher mortality rates...usually about 18% compared to 4% for conventional chicken farming.  "Even discounting the three or four chickens each eagle takes every day throughout the winter, Coady thinks the farm’s chicken-mortality rate is too high. It’s roughly 15 percent throughout the year, though some weeks it’s higher and some weeks it’s lower. He’d like it to be somewhere around 10 percent—far below the estimated 18 percent mortality rate the USDA expects for free-range chickens (for comparison, it’s 4 percent for confined chickens)." 

 The farmer's solution - "Harris has his own ideal solution, and it has nothing to do with noise-makers or reimbursement programs or tourism. If everyone farmed in the nature-first way he does, he says, eagles wouldn’t concentrate on his farm. Flocks of chickens scattered across the Georgia countryside would naturally cause eagles to disperse into smaller, healthier populations."  I guess I am missing something here...so yes the eagle population would spread out..for now, but what would limit eagle population growth if farms all over became raptor dinner tables?  And with an unchecked eagle population explosion, what else will be on that dinner table....little Sparky and Mr. Tibbs?

Audubon Magazine
http://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2016/an-organic-chicken-farm-georgia-has-become-endless
An Organic Chicken Farm in Georgia Has Become an Endless Buffet for Bald Eagles
By Susan MatthewsFall 2016