Dog attack...

Godiva

Crowing
16 Years
May 17, 2007
1,025
105
391
Colorado
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 ...
 
Electric fencing. Thats the best way to keep a predatory dog at bay. I am so sorry to hear of your loss. How tragic. I totally agree with the rock salt. Do yuo know who the dog belongs to? Maybe you can talk to the owner? If there is no owner..well... ya know. S S S !
 
you might want to invest in an electric fence. I priced them today and found a 3 mile fencer to be around $65 and the fence wire was a lot cheaper. I know this will be expensive but I think it would work out really well. I will be electrifying my coop soon for the same reason.
 
I'm so sorry for your loss! That is awful! And for that to happen AFTER you guys worked hard to predator proof it!

I think the type of wire you use also makes a difference. For example, we bought a used run from someone, which has this incredibly strong wire (no idea what kind it is) with tiny holes. Well, it was only 4ft high, and I needed to be able to stand up
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so hubby bought a roll of Chicken wire. What crap that stuff is! Glad it's only on the top 2ft, and the VERY top. The kids were pushing on it, and hubby had to re-adjust it because it just gave and gave.

I've heard lots of people on here suggest hardware cloth. No idea what it is, but might be worth looking into for your coop.

Meghan
 
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I have been looking up electric fencing on the internet and it seems to be really expensive. Where can one find the 3 miles of fencing for $65? We are going to be building a temporary chicken coop inside our workshop so that we don't have to worry about the mulitude of dogs, coyotes, raccons, possums, snakes, etc etc roaming around here. We will use our chicken tractors during the day when it is also not so incredibly hot. (102 F the last couple of days!!!) Talk about a majorly steep learning curve what with predators, heat etc! I would love to hear any advice any of you more experienced chicken owners may have for us! We were hoping to have our chickens fertilizing our yard etc with portable chicken tractors and now it seems we need to rethink and go to the regular chicken coop model. I am really disappointed... We now have chicken wire and also a layer of regular galvanised fencing. The area where the chickens roost is enclosed on three sides with plastic roofing panels and there is roofing over teh whole thing. We were moving them to fresh graze every morning. Do you think we can still do this?
 
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