does anyone have any experience with hawk attacks on lab puppies.

I take my puppies outside for a recess, but i stay with them because i have heard of hawks carring off puppies.

my puppies are 5 weeks, what age is safe from hawks?

Read the thread from a few years ago. I also recently learned that black vultures can be a threat. That being said, I have had a family of turkey vultures intently watching my little dogs and my old Lab. They don't come close when the active male Lab is out, but come down out of a gyre when dogs that are vulnerable are out. I guess they didn't read the bird books about how they only bother with dead prey and scat. The thread in the website link below mentions threats to 9 week old, 25 lb pups, etc. The stories cover a wide geographic area. Eagles and owls could certainly hurt a pup or kill it.

My husband thought I was crazy when I laced kite string back and forth over the puppy pen. He was eating his words when we found feathers all over the next morning.

I don't trust a hawk around my puppies until they are at least 50 lbs. I've heard too many locals talk about hawks attempting to grab their dogs and if the dog is too heavy for the hawk they sink their talons in and seriously hurt the dog. It just scares me too much I always make a point to be outside with them.

There was a recent thread about hawks. Go to
"Labs and (mountain) lions and tigers and bears..."

I almost had a heart attack when I found a Great Horned Owl perched on my puppy pen.....

I had it happen about eight years ago to a young puppy. By eight to ten weeks they are safe but we had the outside area covered after that.
We also had 10 pound Chihuahua years ago that a Barn Owl tried to pick up from our front porch. The noise made us open the door to scrambling feet trying to hang on to the ground. The Owl flew off.
I didn't know that the Turkey Vultures would go after a live animal. Thank you!

Turkey vultures do not go after live animals. They are not adapted for that. I have raised hundreds of vultures, hawks and owls. If you leave a less than 10 pound pup out unprotected, where there are young/nesting raptors..... Well you are stupid. Vultures are a type of stork. They do not have the feet or beak to eat live animals.

Just because a raptor is sitting in a nearby tree, or soaring overhead does not mean it has an older pup on the menu.

I don't mean to be disagreeable, but we have had turkey vultures attack or try to eat live animals....now it was a cow that was down, but they were trying to eat her...we euthanized her. It was horrible. I never knew they would do that....our cows also hide their calves from the buzzards...I've also heard they will eat fawns...they are so helpless. On the other hand....I do not think they would carry off a puppy because that's not the way they operate. Agree very much that an owl will and maybe a hawk.

We have hawks, owls and turkey vultures (up to 26 circling across the farm at once one day here - I was beginning to think i wasn't in Kansas anymore...) My pups only go out supervised if running in the fenced area around the house and I always carry a walking stick with me. If out in xpens, they are under the poplar trees or there is a pop up tent lowered over it and an xpen where the tent doesn't cover.

Bird Man,

I hear you. I couldn't believe it either. With all due respect, not every expert knows everything, especially in what is possibly a very hungry situation for a young or starving predator. Once we couldn't believe coyotes could be in nearby NYC: we all knew they were not in NJ not so long ago, and the experts told us so, even when animal control had the road killed ones. There are no cougars in CT, either, until they are road kill.

The winter morning the probably female and very hungry Cooper's hawk almost got my 10 lb Cavalier puppy, I was only 10 feet away under the eaves it flew over. I called the nearby Raptor Trust, which has internationally acknowledged bird experts. I was just asking what would raptor proof the top of my run--I wanted to know what was on their eagle flight cages. Two experts (not Dr. Soucy) got on the phone to dispute my story because hawks are too small to carry away a pup of that size, and I was informed that they fed on small birds attracted to feeders. I agreed to that, but opportunity was knocking for that bird--she just didn't count on me with my pooper scooper and the adult dogs, including my Canaan Dog. There was no little bird in my puppy paddock. What the hawk had was Cavalier fur in its claws, and what the adults got in their mouths was hawk tail and wing feathers. The pooper scooper swirled overhead simply deterred it as it came by again, as I herded the toy dogs inside. That hawk was hungry enough to try a different prey, maybe for sushi if it couldn't take the whole pup airborne. The adolescents on the Atlantic flyway in the fall also try some weird stuff here, especially the unusual species blown far off course. I used to work for a researcher who was also a birder--it was amazing what flew past our skyscraper lab's window overlooking Central Park, and what they did in situations foreign to them.

As for the vultures, young ones were investigating, and they were certainly perching on my fence and the neighbor's house to watch. I think that they were watching my ancient old Lab as she stumbled, sick with a stubborn UTI, in case she was to die on the spot. They came down to investigate her more than once, which startled us both and led to an end to her being allowed the luxury of naps outside even with her son. I certainly was not happy to have a few swoop down to wake her up as I watched her from my kitchen. I don't know why they came down close to the active Cavaliers, unless there was a predator in the woods that could have made a meal of them and left the vultures some food, if they were not investigating a food source. I use my local crow and jay populations as clues to when I have a hawk or owl nearby--the alert is much different than for a ground predator. I'm not a cartoon watching alarmist. Alarmist, yes--those vultures certainly alarmed us, as do the coyotes who are not afraid of humans here, anymore than the deer are afraid here. I have herded horses and cattle who were more respectful than the wildlife I have to shoo so that I can back my van out here in a New York City bedroom community. The wildlife apparently doesn't read the wildlife books about their behavior.