adorable baby racoon suckling on its dead mother we trapped

[carlf]

Adopt the little critters then learn from them as they mature. Do not confine but provide food and protected den site. As the kittens grows watch how they work your predator containment Keep them up on shots if your vet is willing to handle them. This experience will provide a more sound understanding of how to protect against their wild brethren. Show your poultry keeping neighbors how the raccoon operates and how you defeat its interest in going after chickens.

Are you talking about adopting raccoons??
If you dont have a wildlife rehab permit, in most states, that would be illegal and il-advised

 

[centrarchid]

Are you talking about adopting raccoons??
If you dont have a wildlife rehab permit, in most states, that would be illegal and il-advised

Yes, I am writing about raccoons and now very much aware of the legalities. Part of my job involves wild animals although not furbearers and realize they do present challenges especially when you attempt to keep them like pet cats, dogs and other domesticated animals. You need to pursue the permitting process and really consider the pros and cons before doing that. A problem is that practical knowledge of our wildlife seems to be declining as we isolate ourselves from it. Fewer people hunting / trapping and getting outdoors for things other than athletics insulates us from some the learning curve that was orce common place in the past.

When I did it, the effort (as a minor 40 years ago) was illegal with kittens collected from sows known to be dead. These days I would go through the permitting process and will likely do so in future in part to train my kids as I was trained. The process is not to be taken lightly as you will have critters easily approaching adult dimensions by their first winter and in my experience they averaged heavier than similar aged full-wild individuals. They were sassy and would grumble at you when met walking paths in woods as adults but they never caused be harm. Other parties that kept them had them confined and did other things that resulted in the kittens becoming decidedly unpleasant even before reaching maturity. As adults ours dispersed away from barnyard area although females where the ones you would encounter later. The typical "re-habing" process I bet money yields lower post-juvenile survival rate than what I suggest above. The free-range part allows kittens to learn foraging methods by trial and error with some supervision while still supplied with a food source. They are hardwired to try new stuff. Mortality rate of kittens can be higher while they are small as sow does protect them, especially from predators not human. It was perverse, but our kittens were protected by our dogs (some coon hounds) especially while in the barnyard area which provided exceptional foraging where even a stream and ponds were present. Effort requires better than average resources, much better. Chickens we kept at that time where housed in much more predator resistant housing than I employ currently although I now have electrified poultry netting that can keep raccoons physically away from pens in current use. Back in the day the kittens in particular would invest considerably in trying to get into coops and henhouse which were easily defended. The barn was tougher as during that time hens could not raise chicks free-range and I had to do a little tweaking to deny raccoons ability to go after roosting adults. Raccoons were not able to catch adult chickens during the day unless they found a hen (actually pullets) trying to brood a clutch in the ground where she was not supposed to be.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

It hurts so bad! Nobody told us there would be cute little babies!

It scurried off before we could stop it. We didn't know it was there tell we rolled over the body. It startled us as it popped off and ran away

Coons killed 5 of our chickens. The first coons we got were big boys. Then a female with teats but hubby said theee probably aren't babies because of the time of year. But this one had a baby on it. Hubby is done trapping now.

We're just going to get good about where the chickens sleep from now on.

Raccoon's basically don't carry nursing young around with them. The baby coons remain in the den until such time as they are ready to eat solid food.

 

[centrarchid]

Raccoon's basically don't carry nursing young around with them.  The baby coons remain in the den until such time as they are ready to eat solid food. 

A baby dropping off is more like you would see with a opossum. Are we certain this is a raccoon? I have seen some interesting miss ID's on the predator forum.

 

[ShrekDawg]

Maybe it was just being weaned?

 

[centrarchid]

Weaning off milk for raccoons will be very soon. They will still be looked after often until rut during midwinter. Many will separate from mother for periods of time by fall. Normally this time of year all young of year will be with mother.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

A baby dropping off is more like you would see with a opossum. Are we certain this is a raccoon? I have seen some interesting miss ID's on the predator forum.

Mostly because of an ongoing Federal program meant to exterminate Rabies in the wild coon population, it is now a violation of Federal Law to transport a wild Raccoon and release it anywhere except in the exact same spot were you first captured it.

The Feds are attempting to vaccinate the exploding coon population using an oral rabies vaccine and to do this they air drop millions of small packets of oral Rabies vaccine in wide bands usually going North and South. The idea is to create regions (think wide bands) that are Rabies free by preventing un-vaccinated coons from trading back and forth between these regions. Well meaning but ignorant humans who persist in moving coons willy-nilly around the countryside make this worthy effort almost impossible. The reason is because coons are territorial so any new or released coon has to fight for his or her life. Then if your released coon has picked up a “little” Rabies in one of these territorial skirmishes, buy the time this released coon staggers back to your house, that rabid Raccoon will have infected every young or un-vaccinated coon he happens to cross paths with.

Rabies must be one Heck of a disease because a great uncle of mine who was born in the late 1850s once told me that there was only two things that he witnessed in his life that he would never forget. The first thing was as an 8 year old he watched three men (a father and two sons) being lynched, and the second thing was watching his baby sister die from Rabies.

So be kind and gentle to the raccoons that you catch, give them all a swift sendoff to Raccoon Valhalla.

 

[ShrekDawg]

Weaning off milk for raccoons will be very soon. They will still be looked after often until rut during midwinter. Many will separate from mother for periods of time by fall. Normally this time of year all young of year will be with mother.

That's interesting i more meant since you said they would be eating solid foods before exploring that maybe this coon was in the process of being weaned and eating some solid food and thus exploring. Or do coons stay in the den until fully completely weaned?

 

[ShrekDawg]

Interesting program and sad people can't seem to followit :/ maybe they meed to put up more fliers, ads on tv, mailing people stuff etc. And make the penalties for not following it a lot harsher. I think maybe people just arent aware or educated on it

 

[centrarchid]

The raccoon population explosion is not occurring everywhere, therefore persecuting raccoons in areas where population is not overly high will not provide benefits.