Where along fountain creek are you? I am also along the creek. My land borders colo spgs utilities property south of fountain. I pitty these guys if they try this with my chooks. My dog doest take kindly to trespassers and neither do i. It sounds like it is time to hang the motion activated game camera up in the coop.Mesz5,!!!! It's been an eventful couple of days here on Fountain Creek. School is out and a group of teenagers has discovered that I and one of my neighbors are keeping chickens. I was putting together one of those tumbler type composters in front of my shed Tuesday. This is a spot that can't be seen from the county property which borders my back fence. Heard some noises and my dog started going crazy, so I peeked around to find two kids about to walk in my back gate. I asked them what they were doing and they said they were going to come to my door to see if I wanted to sell any of my chickens. I told them no, and never to just walk in my gate again. Yesterday, I was in the house about 4:30, with my dog, when all of a sudden she rushes out the dog door doing her "I didn't give you permission to be in MY yard" bark. So I go out the front door to find my next door neighbor. He tells me he just ran off a coupla kids who he saw were inside my gated and latched run, chasing my chickens. I went to the back to find out they had left in such a hurry they left my run door open. Good thing I saw that before either the chickens or my dog discovered the easy access. So I get in my car, drive down 4 doors to warn the other chicken keepers (who don't really speak English) that there are some kids around messing with people's chickens, only to find out right after they had left my property they had jumped into their run (has much easier access from the public lands than mine). The teenage boys that live there had chased them off. Then we all started patrolling the walking path that follows Fountain Creek looking for them. Found a group of kids (6 or so) and the boys from down the street said two of them were the ones that jumped their fence. But they were hesitant to call the sheriff, and the two that I had seen the day before were not in that group of kids, so I had no basis to call, since I had not not seen the ones in my coop yesterday. So today I put padlocks on every gate/door/eggbox I could find. It will be a PITA for me to carry keys around with me all the time in case I want to pop into the run, coop or check for eggs, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Was advised by the Sheriff that it would be a bad idea (altho not illegal, just a potential lawsuit from an irate parent) for me to restrain these kids if I actually catch them in my yard again. I'm tempted to set a trap for them, lock them in the coop if I can entice them into it, and THEN call the sheriff. Also have half a mind to carry my revolver around, unloaded of course, just to get it into their minds that I'm willing to defend my property. These kids are not the older dangerous juvenile delinquents, look like they range in age from about 8 to 14. LOL, didn't ask the sheriff what he thought about my revolver idea. He was so discouraging about simply restraining them long enough for them to get there, I didn't EVEN want to hear his opinion of my letting them see a gun. SIGH, I worried about this stuff last year, but when nothing happened, I thought I was safe from the local juveniles. My Bad.
I just put everyone on chick feed and make sure to supplement with oyster shells for the bigger girls plus some things like kale, squash, berry tops, and other nutritious goodies
