All 31 Meat Chickens Gone!

[Mutt Farm]

Can I tell you a story to make you feel better about the time and $$?

Knock on wood (and welded wire, and hot wire and my farm dog and my barn) I've never had an attack. My 2 neighbors and 1 friend, not so lucky. Each time they lost a goat or chicken or 2, they did the minimum. Neighbor 1, 2 stray Pit Bulls chased and bit at his beef calves. They ran through my fence to escape. I offered to loan him a charger. He just threw rocks in the hole they dug to get in. Few days later they came back, ripped the throat open on one and almost chewed another's leg to the bone, ripped their ears to shreds.

Neighbor 2 behind me, tons of beautiful fancy chickens and turkeys. Really ramshackle coops and housing. He lost a bird or 2 every couple nights, for a couple weeks, just wrapped more chicken wire around his shantys. Neighbor 1 lost a baby goat. We hear the coyotes. They run in packs here. So, one night there is mass chaos. Wakes me up. My critters are fine. Next am, Neighbor 2 had 8 dead turkeys, 2 injured turkeys, 15 dead chickens and his kid's dead Chihuahua. My friend, up the pass, lost 8 pet goats to a thrill killing mountain lion.
Good to spend the $$$ and the time to keep your critters predator proof.

Good on ya!

 

[sonofabish1]

In the area that you live where it's known that you have packs of coyote and MOUNTAIN LIONS I wonder why people try and do the bare minimum and think they'll be OK. I understand that money is probably an issue but I wouldn't raise something that I couldn't keep safe.

I know, I know, this coming from the guy that just lost all his chickens. BUT, fool me once..............

I really don't want to wait until next spring to get more chickens. I know all fall and winter I'm going to be thinking about this, not to mention having to buy meat (I just had to buy chicken from the store yesterday

) but I just don't have the time to build a new brooder and get the run secured. I guess if I order chicks now I would probably have a couple weeks to get the brooder built before they showed up. Then I would have a couple weeks to get the run secured. Hmmm....

 

[EmeraldOaks]

We lost ten six-week old Dark Brahma chicks in the space of an hour and a half at twilight while we were out. We suspect a raccoon, but are not sure. There were no feathers, bodies, nothing left. Could've been aliens, but I doubt it! Still a mystery as to what actually got them. Adjacent to our chicken house I had set up a 10'x10' chain link dog run with 3' chicken wire run around the base and wired into the chain link.(We use this to let the little ones out for exercise, and as solitary confinement for misbehaving fowl in between chick raising.) I think what happened was the predator came in down the oak tree that was enclosed, and made off with the chicks. I have since wired the roof with chicken wire, and bring the chicks in at night. We haven't lost any more, and our Pekin Drake raises cain if anything's about. He makes a good watch-duck now that he is fully grown!