I caught a raccoon & another & another ***GRAPHIC PICS*** pic heavy

[sourland]

Scott, neat picture. I have caught many 'manx' coons. All have been mature boars. I wonder if anyone knows the cause? I always sort of figured 'tail removal' might happen when two boars are fighting, but would really be curious to hear other possible causes.

 

[Scott H]

Scott, neat picture. I have caught many 'manx' coons. All have been mature boars. I wonder if anyone knows the cause? I always sort of figured 'tail removal' might happen when two boars are fighting, but would really be curious to hear other possible causes.

That's what I figured also....

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Why are they better than live traps?

A coon doesn't have to enter the trap so he is not shy or caucus about doing so. Coons eat with their hands so the DP plays into the coons' weakness, to a coon sticking his hands into a baited DP is like sticking its hands through the chicken wire and ripping one of your hens apart.

One video shows a coon gobbling up bait from a DP like you or I eat popcorn, well me any way. Meanwhile another coon was waiting patiently in the wings to gobble up in turn any scraps that the first coon neglected to stuff in its mouth.

The DP plays so well to a coons feeding strategy that often you can catch 4 or 5 coons in one night all within sight of each other, showing that raccoons are not trap shy nor are they rare or endangered. By all means trap coons as you wish to trap them but don't release a coon until it has served out all of its life's sentence.

 

[WhiteLeghorn2]

Dry cat food

I mean this in the nicest way, but if you make your coop properly, you won't have to worry about catching predators. We live in the country with coyotes, foxes, coons, minks, skunks, etc and we have never had a break in. We use hardware cloth instead of chicken wire, and we burried hardware cloth 2 feet deep under the coop so that nothing can dig through. Anyways, I wish you the best of luck with the coon problem. I hope your coons go away!

 

[Dreyadin]

Well said BuffOrp. We did the same (hardware cloth over the screens so we could keep the windows open at night in the summer, under the coop to protect the bottom)- too many predators here. The coons are just looking for a meal- was easiest for us to keep the chickens from being an option.

... plus the neighbor eats them. No joke.

 

[Scott H]

Quote:
Yeah, my coop is coon proof but the cam caught this guy at, well you check the time at the bottom of the picture.....this is just the other side of the fence of our free ranging girls.

 

[Shellz]

I'm with Scott H on this. Sometimes it's just necessary to be rid of coons. I had one with distemper climb over the fence into the chicken yard in daylight. Chickens just watched it from a distance while I got my crossbow. Didn't have a license for a real gun at the time. Nasty disease carrying critters. My dogs will often enter that yard on patrol duty, so the only good coon is a dead one around here. JMO.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Raccoons are an invasive species in almost all of their current range.
Removal of bigger predators and especially the proliferation of people, their garbage and pet food has given raccoons opportunity and reason to expand.

I'm not too concerned about losing birds to natives but invasives is another thing, That includes dogs and cats.
After all I and my chickens are invasive species too.

 

[Scott H]

Idaho lists them as "vermin".... Not even fur bearer regs on them.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Before Europeans colonized the Americas, raccoons' primary range was river bottoms in what is now SE USA and Central America.

Look at their range now.
http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=41686

They've also been introduced to Europe and Asia so are now doing their damage in places like Japan, Azerbaijan, Austria, Russia, Czech Republic to name a few.