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

[Steven Bussell]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I understand now painful it is.
I have keep both big and small aquariums. I do everything right and still have lost fish.
Sadly I have gone through two huge die offs. My last one I loss over $500 worth of fish. And I have no idea what happened to cause the die off.
Take time bullet proof your setup. Some times lessons are learned the hard way

Share with us what you do . You may just save others from having to go through the same pain as you.

 

[goldysgirl]

So sorry to hear about your losses. That is devastating and I think the worst part about having chickens. I have a hutch style coop with solid walls and floor, hardware cloth windows, chain link run with chain link roof, chicken wire "skirt" burried on the ground beyond the chain link, with fine PVC garden mesh lining inside of chain link to keep chickens from sticking their heads through (lost 2 to predators that way), surrounded by a 4 foot high wrap of electric fence, with a motion solar light. Sounds like a fortress, but an opposum got into the coop by digging under all of that wire. No casualties though. I would love to have a concrete footer and more solid and gap free fencing, but that would get super expensive.

 

[KIMEng]

If a child can open a latch, so can a raccoon. My coop has locks on each door!
Mary

Hi Mary,
When you say "locks" what type of locks are you referring to?
Thanks
Kim

 

[Folly's place]

I have actual doors with lockable door knobs, and keys, which are hung up nearby.
Pictures of my coop, right after it's last reconfiguration, and before cleanup. Messy, but you can see the structure.

 

[cmom]

So sorry about your loss. Put up a game camera then you will know what you're dealing with. Most chicken owners do fortify their coops and runs after they have losses, I have.
I don't free range any more due to losses and I have electric wire around my coops and pens, concrete under the gates and heavy duty netting covering my pens all because of losses from predators in the past. Good luck and I hope you figure out what killed your birds...

 

[LunaMarieWolf]

I am currently re-wiring the enitre cage to put the little chickies back in.

I lost another chick during the night so I am making a quick run to Atwoods to pick up a chick for my sister (all her chicks she wanted were killed and the one last night that died was the last one she specially picked out to have).

The cage was wired up off the ground, connected to the other rabbit cage where the bottom back half of the cage was covered by the sheet metal.


Something got inside the cage with them, because the bodies were everywhere in the cage, but some were torn apart and were on the floor.

 

[Folly's place]

I wouldn't use it at all. build some thing bigger and safer before having more die horribly.
Mary

 

[cmom]

Most likely what ever the predator is, it will be back.

 

[LunaMarieWolf]

I'm awfully sorry to hear of your troubles! OMG that is just awful! Can you post some pics of your setup? I live in a predator heavy neighborhood, and after reading post here on BYC I set mine up in a sort of compound. I have a perimeter fence which is 6' woven wire orchard fencing, a hardware cloth apron and running 2 1/2 to 3 feet up all the way around. Just above the hardware cloth we have a single electric wire. I've tried to have a buffer around the chicken area so that no animal passing by (especially at night) can see them. So far so good.

Oh except for a few mice that the chickens "sent to college" and a rat that I "sent to college"! Good luck to you I hope you can figure something out.

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".

 

[goldysgirl]

I wouldn't use it at all. build some thing bigger and safer before having more die horribly.
Mary

Do you have a safe outbuilding or garage you can put the cage in until you come up with a more permanent solution...just in case?