Opposums...no fear of people!!!

[honeydoll]

Ok, we are just starting to experience some predator issues. I had a friend stop over late the other night to drop off something, about midnight, I was standing in my front door talking to her because it was raining and my driveway isn't too far from my door, she was in her car. My front door is about 6 in. above the ground and a baby opossum walked literally right under my feet, then another, then moma come sauntering right by me. I was shocked, no fear whatsoever. My mom was like they have rabies if their not scared. My DH built me a fine coop, fully covered run, both of my neighbors lost all their chickens, 20 in all, in two nights from a coon family. We only lost one, our show silkie,

, because it would not come in the coop and we couldn't catch it. It was really freaked out that night. Well, then we found a baby coon got shut in our garage and the moma coon chewed thru our roofing to try to get to it. We had to have the roof repaired for $600! She tore up our rubber roofing that bad. baby coon was trapped, moma shot and we had to destroy the baby, it is illegal here to relocate coons. I am kind of concerned but so far no losses. It's like all of a sudden the predators know we have chickens, almost two years no problems and now we have predators everywhere. Yesterday, my dog was wimpering for about an hour, kept running around my kids when they were playing outside and lifting his nose up in the air, my ducks ran in our garage and wouldn't leave, my chickens kept cackling, we talked to our neighbor and he said a pack of coyotes were at the farm across the road from us, ugh, are we doomed or what???? Predators out the woodworks here!!!

Carolyn

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

We always see alot more this time of year when it starts to warm up. Time to oil up the traps and thin them out, two years ago I stopped counting at 50 'possums in the same trap, in the same place, in a drainage ditch that runs thru our property. There was an old den there and I would shoot the one in the trap and stuff it down the den hole and wait for the next one. Yesterday I found one in a nest box in one of our chicken houses.

Steve

 

[fishman65]

OK. Take a deep breath and try to relax (just a little bit)! Opposums can be very easily trapped and dispatched as well as coons. Regardless of what people say no coop is totally predator proof unless you have a contractor come out and build a scaled down version of your house. Determined dogs can and do chew through chicken wire. all you can do is try to make the best coop you can and deal with the predators as they come. Hardware cloth is expensive but is in my opinion the best material to put in your coop. It is so much easier to spend a couple hundred up front to use the best materials in your coop than it is to loose poultry and feel the loss and heartbreak of loosing your babies. One thing is for sure, if you own poultry you will experience loss and heartbreak. But that is just one of the small drawbacks to the joy and happiness of owning poultry. Good Luck!

 

[Ivywoods]

Possums and raccoons. Those little boogers. Coons will tear or chew through just about anything. Set some traps. Gosh, I have some funny possum stories I could tell. The kids still laugh about me using a doggie pooper scooper to get a half grown possum out of the garage. It didn't want to leave. (I was in town at the time and it would have been illegal to shoot it.)

I don't know how much acreage you have, but my great pyrenees dog is my best predator eliminator. We live on 160 acres with 50 acres of creeks and woods, and we have all kinds of predators. To date I have not lost one chicken to a predator, and I even have some chickens that free range all the time. I owe this totally to my great pyrenees dogs. For me, they are worth their weight in gold.

 

[mom'sfolly]

Possums are very food driven, and are not very afraid of humans. I've had them in my chicken feeder, and my neighbor had one that would come in the house and eat the dog food, while she was right there!!!!! I don't think you have to worry about them being rabid just because they aren't afraid. On the other hand, the chickens might be in danger.

 

[woodmort]

Possums tend to be really dumb when it comes to any kind of danger--playing dead ("possum") is their primary means of defense although they can move right along when they need to. While they can cause problems with chickens, especially if they catch them asleep, they aren't that big a predator on the birds themselves preferring eggs and chicks. They are easily trapped and eliminated. BTW, you see quite a few of these critters dead on the highway primarily because when a car comes along they will drop down and play dead--splat! Fortunately for the species but unhappily for chicken owners, they reproduce fairly rapidly. I remember as a kid growing up in the Hudson Valley in the 40/50's that it was rare to see one, now they're everyplace.

 

[honeydoll]

I hate killing things, but I will if I have too. I love nature, and love watching it, but I will dispose if I have to. Ya, guess opossums are dumb. Of course, ask my mom and it has rabies. I love my Mom dearly, but she thinks everything has rabies, she is getting older.

So any animal that is off kilter in any way is infected in her eyes, and must be turned in to some authority, she has yet to figure out where...

She is an old country girl, and saw rabies as a kid, guess those memories are on her mind....

 

[chicmom]

Hi Carolyn!

I'm excited to meet you because I'm also from NE Ohio. I live right on the border of Stark County--I guess you'd call it northern Tuscarawas county.

Anyhow, I'll share a possum story with you: We live in a very wooded area, near Bolivar. My son was pretty little, and he came running into the house, from the garage, and he says to me, "Mom! There's a raccoon in the garage and it has a pointy nose!" So I went to look, and there was a young possum, hiding on a shelf, right at eye level, next to the steps that lead from the garage into the house! SCARED ME TO DEATH!

We couldn't coax it out, so I put a live trap in the garage, with some chicken scraps in the garage and I trapped it myself. The funny thing is, possums really do play dead, because if we walked near the cage, it would fall over with it's little feet up in the air. It would open one eye and peek at us to see if we were still there.

Hubby felt sorry for it and took it to the back of our property and released it. (I would have shot it.) Anyhow, Just wanted to share the story of the "raccoon with the pointy nose".

I have small backyard flock of 22 chickens of various breeds, and I also have two silkies. What do you have?

 

[Wisher1000]

I work nights, and last week I was going out to the car to go to work when I saw our Lab sitting on the grass waiting to say bye (as he does every night.) I also noticed a large possum walking around about five feet behind him. For a second it was surreal. This is the 80lb Lab that regularly kills grown raccoons and brings them home to show us! I had a hard time wrapping my brain around what I was seeing. My mind flashed to the dead chicken I found last summer just outside the dog pen one day and couldn't figure out why the dogs would stand by quietly while something ate a chicken within 10 feet of their pen. Finally I said "Docker, get that possum!" The dog looked at the possum then at me and dropped his head, dejected. He slowly stood up, walked over to the possum, picked it up and carried it into his dog house! LOL! I fell out laughing! Finally it made sense, he had caught the possum and it sulled, he brought it home to show it off and it roused while waiting on me to come outside. He heard the disapointment in my voice and thought I didn't like his catch so he took his possum and went home!! I closed the gate and left the dog and the possum in the dog kennel for the night. I returned home after daylight the next day, and sent the boys out to remove the dead possum from the dog house. The dog was sleeping and the possum was gone! LOL! I bet he won't come back, though!

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
Possums body temp is generally too low to incubate the rabies virus Most animals are not nocturnal just opportunistic when there is minimum human activity, if not trapped and dispatched or hunted most animals will lose their fear of people.