Free Ranging Neighbors

[MEMama3]

Well, it might not be an issue now.  I was standing outside tending to my meat birds and a coyote ran out of the woods about 10 feet away from me.  It immediately went after their flock.  I ran inside to get a gun, but by the time I got outside it was pretty far into their property.  They weren't home and it is illegal to discharge a firearm on someone elses property without their permission in the town I live in, so there was nothing I could do about it.  Not sure how much of a flock they are going to come home to.

Awww. That stinks. Hope there weren't many casualties. Predators seem very brazen this year. We had a daytime Fox the other day. When I saw him in the morning I let my dog run at it to scare it away. It wasn't afraid of her, so I quickly called her back and gave animal control a call. A small healthy Fox should flee from a big dog in my opinion.

 

[SunnySkies]

My birds were venturing onto the neighbor's property, and it turned out it was because they had left a bag of feed from their failed poultry keeping (foxes or something got their birds) on their driveway, which was attracting my chickens and ducks. I put a fence to deter mine, and they cleaned up, and it hasn't been an issue since. Perhaps making sure you minimize dropped feed will help....assuming any of their chickens are left.

 

[NHchicks]

Wow, I hope you let us know what happened with the coyote. It could have just as easily come after your birds.

Are there roosters in either of these flocks? Just curious if there might be cross breeds coming out of this.

Live Free Range Or Die, altho I like to keep my happy little chicken family as its own group, so I don't know if I'd want them hanging out with the neighbors all the time. Hmm.

I'd probably put up a cheap nylon fence and just tell the neighbors I was only thinking of them, not wanting my birds to go on their property. Actually, we did that, to keep our chickens from trespassing.

PS - What's really sad is that the neighbor's chickens were so tame and trusting, and they got predatorized.