We woke up the other night because our dog was barking inside the house. IT was 1:30 am so I took a few moments to wake up enough to realise that I was hearing our chickens in an uproar. We had had them out in their portable chicken coop for 4 days and had worked really hard on predator proofing it first. One of the roos(11 weeks old) was crowing fit to bust. DH ran out and caught a glimpse of a dog running off. It had torn a hole in the wire and got into the coop! We had no idea that something could tear through wire like that! THere were 3 chickens lying around dead and a number of others missing. We found one sussex hen lying in the grass a good ways off and she seemed shocked so we put her in the brooder for the night. Early in the morning DH found a sussex roo hiding out in the grass too. He went into the brooder too. And amazingly an orpington roo made it through the night unscathed in the woods (we also had three raccoons squabbling around our house on and off all night!) He came strolling out of the woods at about 8:30 am and gave us a fine run for our money trying to catch him again. He had a few rumpled tail feathers and was limping slightly but seems absolutely fine now. One we never did find. The next day DH had to put the two wounded sussex down as we discovered that they both had broken legs and the hen had a bite to her chest that was bleeding. THey were in a lot of pain. I am still processing the whole thing. We had ordered straight run chicks so as to have plenty roos for the fridge and ended up only having 5 hens! We lost two in the attack and are now down to 3! We have had to put galvanized fencing around the coop as well and we put our baby monitor outside at night now so that we can hear (the air conditioner is going and all the windows are closed now) Lo and behold it was back a couple of nights ago but as soon as the flashlight shone on it it vanished! We have a trap from animal control but have only caught a raccoon so far... Any ideas on how to get this elusive critter? I woul dlove to get a load of rock salt into its hide but ...