- Mar 7, 2013
- 1
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Hello, My boyfriend decided to get some chickens over a year ago. We purchased a house in southern california...in the suburbs.. it had a pretty big dog run with a nice size dog house. My boyfriend decided that he would turn that into a chicken coop. He didn't research and just went with it. Well....it went went well for the first year....we thought. We got our 3 chicks and raised them to good health. Both of us are city people...not farmers.Egg laying started...and life was great. Our 3 year old at the time loved getting the eggs from the "coop" and eating all of them. One morning....one of our hens..named after my son...was headless and torn apart. I lost it.....really lost it. I couldn't stop crying. (This is why i don't own any pets) My boyfriend cleaned up the mess...and we were confused. I started doing research and came to the conclusion that it was a raccoon. So...my boyfriend went out and bought some chicken wire(which now we've learned does not protect the hens)... and did a half *** job at patching up the fence. Then....he ordered 4 more chicks. Again...we raised them to good health...and put them in the coop. Now....I was losing sleep because I still didn't think that the coop was safe because there were still gaps in the fencing. BUT...my boyfriend was convinced that it wouldn't happen again! Well guess what? They came back and attacked 2 of my hens and one was fine...but the other one was almost dead. I LOST it....I had to leave the house because I was terrified. I was so mad at my boyfriend...and I felt that he wasn't being a responsible hen owner. We got in a huge fight...and after I calmed down from this traumatizing experience, I would come onto this website and find out more information about solutions to our chicken problems. Our hen that was practically dead.....actually survived after we nursed her back to health for 2 weeks. I'm a nurse and my boyfriend is a doctor....so we were able to care for her the best we could and now she is back with the rest of them. We can't believe it. She's the one on my avatar.
So...now we are adding layers of the correct wire to our coop. It's pretty big...so it's taking us some time. It's about 80 percent done. Then.....last night, we picked up a raccoon trap from one of our friends...and guess what we found in it??? Not a raccoon.....a freaking possum!!!!
I had no idea that both of these animals are trying to destroy our chickens.UGH!!!
So...now we are adding layers of the correct wire to our coop. It's pretty big...so it's taking us some time. It's about 80 percent done. Then.....last night, we picked up a raccoon trap from one of our friends...and guess what we found in it??? Not a raccoon.....a freaking possum!!!!
I had no idea that both of these animals are trying to destroy our chickens.UGH!!!
from Ohio. So glad to have you aboard. So sorry about your hen. Having a secure coop for night time is important because like drumstick diva said, everything has chicken on their mind. Good luck. 
