I am really starting to dislike foxes...

[segeine]

So we have a predator that has taken out over half of the flock, including one of the roosters about a month ago, when they were free ranging (now they are unhappily on full lockdown) and now one INSIDE the coop, less than an hour ago. I've set up the halogen floodlights so I can see the coop, tied the dog out near it for the night and am afraid to go to bed. Instead, I am sitting in the bathroom, as that's the only window I can see the coop from.
I'm pretty sure it's a fox, as my brother saw one just after the attack that took the other too. My big roo has a bloody comb, like he tried to protect poor Betty White and failed.
We're going to have to figure out how it got in when it gets light out, and get that fortified. And get hubby, oldest son and my brother to go pee around the coop whenever nature calls.
So depressing.

--Segeine.

 

[segeine]

And the husband is starting to think we should give up on the whole chicken thing. The rest of us will be so sad!

 

[Howard E]

When I was a kid, we had chickens......and then we didn't. I asked my mother a while back why they stopped raising them and her simple reply was the varmints. Back then, they simply could not keep the varmints from killing their birds, so they gave up. And they were a young couple and money was tight, and feed was expensive. So easy to see why.

But, if you really enjoy your birds and want to keep them and are willing to work at it, you can have them. Trick is in building a perimeter they can't get through. In the short run, it starts with a coop they can't enter, and you expand it from there with a combination of fenced run, fence and/or fences. There should be no reason to sit up all night with worry.

This may require some investment in time and money to defeat them, but it can be done. Question is do you have the time and money to invest? If not, then you may face the same choice my parents had to make.