Tell How Predators Got Your Chickens. Save Somebody Else From The Bad Experience - Page 12

I heard a lot of people saying possums weren't a bother. I live in a rural piece of a city, and we have opossums everywhere. They only bad animal attack we had was from a possum. It was maybe 11 at night, I woke up to a racket outside the house, the coop we had at the time had a lid you can lift out, thank god for that, the lid had fallen and the girls went flying out the top and outran the possum. They're pretty slow mammals. Anyways.. the possum went running when I flew out of the house yelling in my robe with a broom. It was a funny sight really, me in my robe with a broom, the rooster protecting his gals, and the house cat wondering what was going on; all chasing this possum. He had tried to grab one my roosting chickens of their shelf. The chicken had ran and hid behind the shed. She had a pretty bad gash/bite on her rump from her back down around her thigh. She recovered fine though. Thankfully that was the only bad attack. We don't have much more than possums, and I've not seen much of raccoons. Not even a couple dead on the road, just possums, we eventually trapped and relocated a couple, fixed the coop up better with a better latch, and a roof that doesn't fall. I know that if that roof hadn't come off when it did my girls would have been stuck in the coop with an extremely sharp toothed predator. I feel that when they can't get out of the coop and run from the predator, they're sorta sitting ducks. But it's better they don't get it in at all.

We also have a motion sensor light around our coop now. I see it pop on every once in while at night. Has anyone had an issue with predators eventually getting used to a motion sensor light and ignoring it? I have no idea what pops it on, as we have cats roaming around, and tarps blowing in the wind.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achickenwrangler#1 

Yeah, I wish more people would read a thread like this, right now am looking through threads on coops for ideas, and most of them are woefully unprotected....tsk tsk...I see a smorgasbord for coons...which, in suberbia are everywhere..you just don't see them at two am-..oh well, can't save them all.

Ive actually been planning on building a coop so this site has been very helpful

!!!

Wow, a bunch of interesting posts.  I think, even though we have done a lot of proofing, we are probably still vulnerable.  The strange thing is you can go for several years with no  problems and then a predator decides to get in and you have to deter them or give up.  I think making your coop as predator proof as possible is the best course because once they know there is easy, high quality food there it is hard to deter them.  I am thinking of an electric wire to deter them, preferably solar powered.  Any good recommendations?

It was a series of stupid on my part. Started with me not locking them into the small brooder coop. It was warm and I thought they'd enjoy the freedom. Next was my laziness in locking only the top lock to the run and leaving the bottom lock undone. Next I opened windows in the house for air flow. Then, the dogs were not taken into our room as they usually are. As a result our St Bernard jumped out a window, pushed the bottom of the run gate open and killed 30 chickens.

I had read in several places that you can repel raccoons with moth balls.  It doesn't work..  I spread a box of moth balls in a arc between the chickens and the woods where the critters come onto the property and set a trap between that and my precious chickens.  I woke up today with a younger 'coon in the trap.  Fortunately I've tried to make the coop as predator proof as possible but nothing short of Fort Knox will keep a determined predator from ravaging your flock.

We had a hook and eye latch on our egg-hatch door.  (enough said, right?)   We lost all but one hen to raccoons that night.