Bobcat in CT

[MooseHillFarm]

thought that I'd seen it all here, coyote, grey fox, red fox, hawk and racoons have all checked out my coop. this morning around 8 am, heard the chickens raise a ruckus and the dogs started barking like crazy. look out the door and see a small grey animal with a whitish bob tail standing by the coop, took off when it heard me.

only saw it for a second, but long enough to know it wasn't fox or coyote...in fact when I saw the white tail thought for one confused second it was deer but then realized it was waay too small. didn't even know we had bobcat in CT, what a shock. went on-line and found a picture of a bobcat at an Oxford residence a couple of weeks ago, hunting muskrat on a pond, so they are here for sure!

chicks were out in pen at time of visit but ran squawking into coop and are fine.

 

[eponagirl]

Yes, we have bobcats in CT...I have seen several on the edge of our property and in the road over the last couple of years...but we didn't have chickens then. Our coop is being built right next to our house and we are making it as predator proof as we can.

You may also want to know that a mountain lion (yes you heard right!) has been spotted several times in my neighborhood (we are in NE CT) and may have attacked a horse a couple of years ago. Someone just saw one two miles down the road last week. YIKES! There are alot of woods and natural prey around, so I really hope that doesn't become a problem for us in the future.


ps...love your Aussie! (we have 3, they alert of us of most things too)

 

[MooseHillFarm]

3 days after the bobcat in the yard incident, it came back in early evening and grabbed a chicken. Crazy husband took off into the woods after it, with a bb gun following the white feather trail. He found the cat under a bramble stripping off feathers and winged it a few times. It then ran towards DH instead of away! He didn't have time to pump up the bb gun so yelled and swung the gun around to use as club. Luckily it ran off, but came back twice that night, looking for the chicken that got away.

Bird managed to walk back to our house but had deep puncture wounds and died. Our free ranging days appear to be over. We've lived here for 8 years and this is first time for bobcat.

 

[Big dreams]

Electric fence!! I am conveinced that is the way to go. So sorry about your chicken, it is sometimes so

 

[MooseHillFarm]

Quote:
The chicken that got nabbed was free ranging up by the woodline when bobcat pounced, so luckily it didn't get in coop. Electric fence would be real tough as we've got almost 4 acres to cover. Plus we're right up against a 100 acre nature sanctuary. Only solution we can see is to keep the chickens in coop and pen, maybe switch to a portable coop to keep them grass fed.

This was a BIG bobcat, probably male because we both guessed it to be 50 lbs. It's like wild kingdom here these days. In Feb, it was coyote keeping us up nights, come spring it's mr. bobcat.

 

[eponagirl]

How sad, so sorry for your loss!!

It probably was a male...the one I saw up close looked very masculine and was approx 50lbs too. He ran into our woods because I startled him out of our field after a severe storm...but then immediately turned around and stared me down. It was a little creepy and it actually does not surprise me (though I still find it shocking) that it turned toward your husband. At least he did not get hurt too. I've seen a female sitting in the road and it was smaller with a slightly different coat color.

A portable pen of some sort might work. Someone around here uses Premier electric fence for chickens...you can move it around to different areas. We may have to look into that too after hearing your story.

Bobcats, yikes!

 

[MooseHillFarm]

thanks for steering me to portable electric fencing...could set up a pen in the middle of the yard well away from woods. much better than trying to do the whole yard.

 

[Stimpy]

Traps. If you don't have any, call your local game ranger. I'll bet he can give you the name of someone who will come trap that cat for you.

-Stimp-