BDutch's bantam flock & natural breeding projects #5 🪺 🪺 and #6

[fluffycrow]

Add coyotes/canine to this list.
After I posted this I went out and found 7 chicken bodies and a couple chicks missing.
I took the usable meat of 5 hens and one sweet cockerel. About a gallon of drumsticks and thighs, half gallon of boneless breasts.

I was in the house less than an hour.
Of course one was my favorite. She hatched my first meat mutts and hadn't laid much if any this year...I didn't butcher her.

I'm so sorry for your loss

 

[fluffycrow]

I’m just so sorry to read about this! I have had raccoon attacks recently, I lost 2. I hope you can figure out something, I’m rehoming the rest of my flock tomorrow, I honestly can’t imagine life without chickens but i need time to change some infrastructure.

So sorry to read. I can't imagine how difficult this must be

 

[fluffycrow]

×2 on the predator load. We don't get much here. As I've mentioned in Shad's thread, lots of feral cats, a few foxes, as well as kestrels and the very uncommon buzzard. The last two have not killed a bird so far. When I was first starting we would also have weasels, but they never got a chicken. One time when I was cleaning the coop I did find a weasel skull, so the opposite might have happened. The forest below us has started housing wild boar, but those are not a large issue for the chickens, and they can't get into the property anyway

 

[BDutch]

how is Black now ?

She’s eats and drinks well. Goes outside with the others to free range, stopped mothering, and walks around slowly in an unnatural way.

Black obvious needs time to recover. Hope its only a bruise and its just painful for the time being to walk properly . With humans a severe bruise can be painful up to 6 weeks.

If there are serious damages and something is fractured around her hip she probably will never walk like she did before. Time will tell.

Black is not a wild chicken, and the other hens respect her. So she has no problem to get nourished. But she is vulnerable for predators the way she is now.

 

[NanaK]

I’m just so sorry to read about this! I have had raccoon attacks recently, I lost 2. I hope you can figure out something, I’m rehoming the rest of my flock tomorrow, I honestly can’t imagine life without chickens but i need time to change some infrastructure.

Very sorry for your loss.
I'm sure this was a difficult decision for you.

 

[Molpet]

@Molpet and @Sequel I'm very sorry too for the loss of your hens and the sweet cockerel.

It seems to me like the predator load is maybe harder to deal with in the US than here. We don't have racoons, coyotes, not to mention bears, which all seem difficult (and expensive) to deter.
It's too bad racoons are such dangerous predators for our chickens. I thought they were actually cute and funny, like Ewoks, when I first saw them in the US thirty years ago, but the overpopulation problem was barely beginning then.

@BDutch how is Black now ?
One of my neighbours recently had losses from a beech marten. He said it came for the eggs mostly, but would attack the hens when it saw them. He managed to trap it with an egg I think.

Used to be people hunted and trapped predators for fur pelts. I never seen a coyote until the 90s and deer were rare. Big nuisance now .

In the 70s I was getting $50 for a XL prime raccoons pelt. Now it's $5... I would spend that much for salt to preserve it and more for shipping.

 

[NanaK]

Used to be people hunted and trapped predators for fur pelts. I never seen a coyote until the 90s and deer were rare. Big nuisance now .

In the 70s I was getting $50 for a XL prime raccoons pelt. Now it's $5... I would spend that much for salt to preserve it and more for shipping.

Same here. Trappers say it costs more to get them than they can get for the pelts.

A very few still trap foxes and racoons for hunting preserves and training dogs. The are sold alive. Of course they have lots of rules to follow.

Now predators every where.

 

[fuzzi]

I offer my sympathy to those who have lost chickens, whether by predator or illness/injury. When I first owned chickens over 30 years ago I lost my rooster and two of three hens one night, probably was a raccoon. I can still see their bodies in my memory, it was that traumatic.

 

[BDutch]

I haven’t lost any chickens, but obvious there is something out there that scares the hell out of my chickens.

First escape artist was Black (injured and found 5 houses down the road.
Second escape artist was Janice, spotted 6 houses down the road+crossed a street.
And tonight Ini mini didn’t return when the chicks and the rest of the flock all came home.

I walked up and down the road a few times calling her and feared she was gone forever. The chickens were restless and Janice seemed upset (looking out) that Ini mini was missing.

Finally just before dark she got home by herself through the hedge, coming from our neighbours garden. She was telling me something (no egg song) when she came towards me and only after she stopped with her repeating chat she went inside the coop to join her family.

Im sure there must have been some trouble because until now she always stayed with the chicks.

 

[Perris]

That's stressful, for the chickens and for you. I hope you all get a peaceful night.