Thanks, I, and my now grown daughters, have had a veritable menagerie as well in the past, although now the elder is down to two Shiba Inu's and Grandma's Pomeranian is visiting her. The younger has a kitten, and I have chickens.
I sympathize! Near neighbors clear cut 200 acres last year, and everything that used to live there seemed to find a way to the backyard, where all seemed determined to dine on purebred chickens--the rarest, costliest first!
You can eliminate opossums--they eat the head and neck first. You said...
I have been keeping chickens for less than a year, but I have nearly an entirely new flock and focus. I buy, hatch, raise, and sell purebred stock and fertilized eggs as well as maintain a separate mixed flock of hybrid, sex-linked, and production layers for selling organic eating eggs and...