I am soooooo close to giving up.. Graphic story warning

[cmom]

So far I have seen many different predators but lately only a fox around the coops. I have electric wire around my coops and pens. My lowest wire is about 6" off of the ground. Most of the predators here prefer to dig. A dox did dig under a gate during the day and killed several birds. I put concrete under all of the gates. I have heavy duty netting covering my pens and in some of the more vulnerable places welded wire buried a foot deep under the fence and attached to the bottom of the fence. I still have the electric wire around it all. Everything was done because of predators making a kill. I did eliminate a couple of foxes. We had a lot of coyotes but a neighbor invited some hunters onto his property and I haven't seen many in quite awhile so maybe the hunters got some. Previously most nights I would see a coyote on at least one of the cameras and often times more than one. The fox that has been snooping around lately probably has kits. If it bothers my birds, it will be eliminated. Good luck and have fun...

 

[LunaMarieWolf]

thanks for the update, new to hens and enjoyed your read. Congrats on finishing your first year. My older can home early to finish school online like many others. Glad to hear your mom has managed to change your dad's opinions on raising chickens. How many chickens are you now up to?

Thank you so much! Finishing school work online was hard especially since I had all homework heavy classes this semester. 100% not how I expected my first year of college to end, but I am glad I made it through.

We are up to 18 chickens with 8 babies being raised up by a broody hen. I have 15 in the incubator that if I can't sell them, will become part of the flock.

Plus my mom is looking into getting more hens, since we took in a rooster from a cousin. Sadly my cousin had to give up a very handsome roo because she lives in the city limits, and they have a no-rooster policy. Plus this winter he suffered from a bad case of frostbite on his lovely comb, so my mom took him in to also heal him up.

 

[TexasTurkeyMama]

We tossed all our chicken wire when we learned a coin need only place a paw inside a coop and wait patiently for the panicked birds to run past its outstretched paw. We called it shredded chicken syndrome.

We also learned that an airline style dog crate would not keep the chickens safe. We uparmored every dog crate with 1/4" hardware cloth including the door.

In one of your photos I saw stalls with open air above each door. That will allow overhead predators in as well as the four legged kind.

I would bring inside as many as you can while you make your retrofits.

My Dad doesn't allow me to have any electrical anything up by the chickens. (I managed to sneak a heat lamp out here by plugging multiple extension cords and running it into his building secretly)

Plus if I used electrical fencing, it would shock the cows that roam up here and my Dad would rather cook up all the chickens than have one of his precious cows shocked by the fencing.

My dad is one of those "I grew up raising chickens so they don't need all of this stuff you think they need" aka a closed in coop, heat lamp for baby chicks, actual fencing around the tops of the coops..

I had to beg him to let me put wire around the top of the chicken coop, and he got me chicken wire because "nothing can break through chicken wire".

 

[LunaMarieWolf]

We tossed all our chicken wire when we learned a coin need only place a paw inside a coop and wait patiently for the panicked birds to run past its outstretched paw. We called it shredded chicken syndrome.

We also learned that an airline style dog crate would not keep the chickens safe. We uparmored every dog crate with 1/4" hardware cloth including the door.

In one of your photos I saw stalls with open air above each door. That will allow overhead predators in as well as the four legged kind.

I would bring inside as many as you can while you make your retrofits.

Yep! One of the dangers of having chicken wire. If you can see in my updated photos, we were unable to "upgrade" the chicken wire. We did double sided blankets on each side of the chicken wire (outside the coop and in) and wired, zip tied, and nailed down.

The ventilation through the sheet metal roof is too small for any animal to sneak through (except for wasps and snakes, but we clean out the nests when we catch them and have never seen a snake up there yet).

Anyway, the ventilation is never covered up, but we can unhook the blankets/ cut zip ties if needed for more ventilation during the summer days. We always keep it closed during the night and just remove bedding to keep the coop cool.

As for coons. Well, my dad and family neighbors decided to do a lot of trapping and because the forest was thinned out very heavily last summer. We have seen maybe 2 raccoons. And they come nowhere near the house.

Also eliminating the trash and wood piles we kept around the coop (one of the stalls a few doors over from the coop used to be our trash bin) does wonders!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Yup, keeping trash and scraps away is a big help in keeping raccoons away, also possums and skunks. That's one big reason our girls get very few kitchen scraps any more, and then, only in the morning when they have plenty of time to clean it up. The chickens used to be my garbage disposers but not any more. Now, anything they might not clean up, and especially any meat scraps, go in the freezer until trash day. That's right, I have chickens and I actually pay to have my garbage picked up. But I rarely have losses to raccoons or other predators so it's worth it.