Beginner chicken owner

chickins43

Chirping
Sep 11, 2023
7
72
54
Las Vegas, NV
Hi everyone! Newbie chicken owner here! We just got chickens in May and have raised them from babies. We started out with 10 hens (or so we thought…they were sexed in the store we bought them from) but we ended up having two grow into roosters! I adopted two more hens from someone in town who was looking for a new home for their chickens so then we had 12. However, We had an unfortunate event while we were gone one day and what we think was a coyote killed 4 of our chickens! (Our best rooster and 3 hens) My daughter was devastated her favorite chickens and her favorite rooster got killed, and we are all sad about it. We are down to 7 hens and 1 rooster. We are working on building a nice enclosure for them that we can keep them in when we are not here to keep an eye on them. Otherwise, they usually roam our backyard and go into their coop at night. We were surprised a coyote got over our wall as most of it is 8 1/2 feet tall but in some areas is only a little over 6ft. We are also thinking of installing coyote rollers on our walls around our property. Has anyone had experience with these and do you know if they work well? Anyways, I am learning fast how to be a chicken doctor as a few of our chickens have had soft eggs break inside of them and have been acting lethargic. I was able to get one back to healthy and acting normal and the other is isolated inside with me right now until she starts looking better. I joined this site because I got some useful information during this time of trying to nurse my chickens back to healthy! Thanks for sharing your knowledge! It helped me save my chickens! ❤️
 

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Welcome to Backyard Chickens. Pull up roost stay awhile.
Hardware cloth is the best friend against predators.
I am very sorry your loss.
Thank you. We were so sad, my daughter and I just cried. They got my favorite sweetest Orpington,Carmel,who loved to snuggle me all the time. I will definitely have to look into hardware cloth. Thanks for the advice.
 
Hello, and welcome to BYC! We're so glad you joined us! :frow
So sorry for your losses, and good luck with your ill chickens. :hugs

I don't think a coyote could climb walls that high, I'm thinking your losses could've been from a racoon instead, in my opinion. But who knows.
Where were your chickens when you had the attack?
I second using hardware cloth (Make sure to get 1/2".), it's the best thing to use for an enclosed area.
 

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