10:00 am

[Sylviaanne]

My husband just shot a opossum!!! Coming in broad daylight to my coop!! I thought they were nocturnal. I didn't think I would want revenge, just want it gone but I grabbed up a short piece of 2x4 and beat on the thing. It was still moving but if it wasn't dead, it wasn't far from it.

Ok, it was a male, do I need to worry about a mate and kitts? We still have a raccoon, I have seen it and looked it right in the eyes. So, would a opossum kill and eat a chicken or just steal and eat eggs?

Broad daylight, I can't believe it!

 

[enola]

Where there is one, there are more. Usually possoms are after feed or eggs, but they have been known to steal chicks from under broodies and kill chickens.

 

[Sylviaanne]

Would they eat the chickens in the run or would they try to drag them over the fence? Thanks.

 

[enola]

I don't know if possums are known for carrying off their kills or not..... The 2 that killed my hens were still eating the hens right in the coop when I found them.

 

[Sylviaanne]

I don't know if possums are known for carrying off their kills or not..... The 2 that killed my hens were still eating the hens right in the coop when I found them.

I was wondering because something was eating chickens in the run behind the coop but I didn't realize until today that we had 2 predators at the same time. It also appeared to me as if something was killing and partially eating the birds and then taking off with the rest of the body. I would find lots of feathers and a bit of blood and bones or a wing or even legs with a pelvis still attached, not all the same bird, especially since I would miss this one or that one. I didn't know that opossums and raccoons could coexist in an acre or less. Someone of them pulled one of my smaller chickens, probably a pullet right through the fence of my small pen and it was at the same place where I saw the raccoon.

Can/would a raccoon and/or a opossum eat more than one bird a night? I know of one night that 2 disappeared and now I wonder if they each got one or if the times when I thought 2 were missing, were being eaten by the same predator.

 

[enola]

Some people on the site report catching a racoon in their trap. Then after resetting the trap, catching 6 or more racoon before the trap stays empty. At my place in SC, I have trapped coons, possums,skunks, tame cats, ferel cats, stray dogs and roaming neighborhood dogs. My neighbor shot grey foxes and red foxes last summer. Plus we hear coyotes at night and see at least 3 types of hawks in the day! All on less than 5 acres...... And then there are the the squirrels that I constantly battle to protect the feed and eggs!

 

[Sylviaanne]

Some people on the site report catching a racoon in their trap. Then after resetting the trap, catching 6 or more racoon before the trap stays empty. At my place in SC, I have trapped coons, possums,skunks, tame cats, ferel cats, stray dogs and roaming neighborhood dogs. My neighbor shot grey foxes and red foxes last summer. Plus we hear coyotes at night and see at least 3 types of hawks in the day! All on less than 5 acres...... And then there are the the squirrels that I constantly battle to protect the feed and eggs!

We have 8 acres but only use about 1 1/2 because the rest is all up hill or down, plus that is where the house was when we moved in. LOL We have a live animal trap but only caught one raccoon in it last summer and I think either he's back or this one was almost trapped in it and he got wise to it. My husband had a pet raccoon when he was a child so he didn't want to kill the one last summer and he found out there is a place he could release it about 6 miles from where we live. It could have come back and as far as I can tell it lives on the south side of the house and that is the direction it would have come from that he had released it.

We haven't heard any coyotes but I am pretty sure I saw one crossing the road about 1/8 mile up the road from us. Darn roosters, guineas and geese are not the quietest animals around and I figure they are just begging to be eaten when they make noise at night.