Dealing with a possum

[Folly's place]

I'll reinforce the ' only trap if you will shoot' plan here. And, if an opossum can enter your coop, so can every other predator! Fix your coop issues, or don't plan to have chickens so they can get killed every night.
Relocating varmits is only allowed in Michigan on your own property, or on private land within the same county, with landowner permission. And then the critter will try, and might succeed, in making it back home, or starve, or get killed badly on the road. It's not better for anyone!
Having safe housing is essential, and this is a lesson we've all learned the hard way. Me too.
Mary

 

[centrarchid]

You can have an immature Opossum lurking your yard that is able to through fencing and the like other predators have difficulty with. They begin hunting on their own small enough to go through 2 x 4 welded wire without even slowing down. Generally, the same Opossums are easy to stop by adding hardware cloth or even chicken wire. I used to confine adult Opossums for months on end using pens made of chicken wire. The chicken wire is not tough enough for other predators so I would go heavier. For some reason the small ones do not excite dogs like adults. I am having my headaches with Opossums now even with fencing and dogs owing to ranging habits of the critters being tight where they somehow get past fencing without being deterred by shock and have an escape route that is very direct. Normally I suspect Opossums are a bit slow mentally but two here I have found run with all they got as soon as a disturbance from the direction my dogs and I come from. Game camera images indicate that strongly.

Upgrading your pen will be easy to do. I am going to dispatch my little eggheads when opportunity presents itself.

 

[Folly's place]

Smart opossums! Who knew? I guess everyone can't be equally dumb.
Mary

 

[SanMarcoSilkies]

A possum got one of my silkies at dusk one day right as she was going in coop from the run, heartbreaking!

 

[centrarchid]

Opossums are not world class pursuit predators. You can give chickens an edge by adding a little supplemental light when the sun goes down.

Juvenile chickens I have in a 10' x 10' dog kennel can elude a half grown Opossum all night even while the birds are catching insects attracted to a light. Also video to support that in another thread. Light going off would be bad news for the same chickens.