18 Chickens killed

[crazy chook]

Quote:
The first time today that my heart was lightened.....I'll get the incubator tomorrow and follow your suggestions. I only took the ones from the last two days. How "old" could they have been in the fridge to attempt to hatch them?

They can be in the fridge for quite a long time and still hatch. I bought Trader Joes Grocery store (fertile) eggs and out of 36 eggs I had about 22 hatch. These had been refrigerated, shipped, and refrigerated again and they did just fine. Good luck!

I have just hatched 36 out of 48 eggs that were in the fridge for 4 days before I decided to set them instead! I did leave them on the bench overnight to come back up to room temp before I incubated them.
i thought it was a great hatch considering they were in the fridge.

So sorry for your loss, I hope you are able to hatch some babies.

 

[darkmatter]

Quote:
I remembered mice and rat chewed holes at the bottom of the door in my relatives Coops when I was a kid. When I built my Coop, one of the "little" things I did was put angle iron (cut from an old bed frame) over the wood on the threshold. So far, I haven't found any chew holes anywhere else. I remember also how worn the thresholds get from traffic hauling stuff in and out over the years, the angle iron fixed that.

 

[HighNDryFarm]

Just an update...nothing in the trap for the two nights following the killing..bated with...well, you know....this concerns me because we know that animals eat daily and return to such a great feast.

My friend is giving me a couple of girls to keep my roo company. We'll continue to lock them in the enclosed stall in a cage, in our barn (a bit of overkill but I'm a bit freaked out right now) until I can completely clean up the run and get a more secure door on the hen house. Then introduce the new girls to the hen house and presuade Big Daddy that he has to go in the hen house, not roost on it. The trapper said I don't need a lid on the run as long as the hen house is fully enclosed and the door is secure.

So appreciate all the input and support. I hope to help others in return. I've raised a lot of different animals over the years and hope to have something to offer. My mom said that as soon as I stopped "breeding" I starting breeding everything I owned.

Horses, dogs, chickens....in fact in the midst of all the kaos that day, my friend who has been looking for a suitable dog for me for the last two years called and said she thinks she has a girl that meets what I've been looking for....so ironic.

 

[drumstick diva]

Big Daddy's Mom - we must be kindred soulmates. You breed everything ! Me too. I can't even have plants without breeding(hybridizing) them. I started with African violets, and ended up with their cousins "streptocarpus". I have hundreds of them and never have any room for new litters when they get to the 'grow out' stage - at least they don't make any noise. Even when I was a little kid I had to have 3 stuffed dogs (per kind) mama, papa and baby. Then started breeding/showing dogs. Oh well, you can see I outgrew that. Lol.

 

[HighNDryFarm]

Quote:
I flunked everything in biology except reproduction.....

 

[CANDLE98]

We had a racoon attack and the head and the upper ogans were gone on many of my chickens. We didn't know what it was until the second night when my husband shot it!

 

[WillieBoy]

Sorry for your loss, i agree, sounds like a member of the weasel family.Live trap with chicken guts...

 

[woodmort]

First of all unless someone really had a grudge against you I seriously doubt it was a human. Weasels and their kin are notorious for killing by making very small incisions in the jugular and lapping up the blood then piling up for later consumption. When I lost mine I had to look very closely to see the damage and, considering that I caught the little bugger, there is no doubt as to what was doing it. Raccoons are not going to kill that many without eating something, usually the crop if nothing else. Also weasels and mink can get in through holes a lot smaller than any coon.

I used the head from one of the dead birds and medium sized live trap set in the coop. Had the critter within 24 hours.

BTW, when I replaced the coop door I built the new one with heavy, galvanized flashing around both the inside and outside edges--live and learn.

 

[HighNDryFarm]

Just an update....nothing in the trap for over a week. We've tried lots of different things as bait as the days went on but no signs of something even looking in the cage! Even put some bait where they could reach it without going in and there it sat. Guess we'll never know....

My friend gave me a Polish Crested just to make me smile and then one of her Barred Rock since that was my roo's favorites. I have 22 "ify" eggs in the incubator, I've never used an incubator before so I've been following the "Will they Hatch" thread.

Thank you everyone for all the input and support. It's been a great help in all this crazieness!

 

[TigerLilly]

Just saw this thread...sorry about your losses. Even sorrier that you haven't caught the predator.
Happy to hear about eggs in the 'bator, though.
btw...