It's my fault really. With 3 kids under 4, I have been a total scatter brain lately. I have been letting my 5 chickens out in the evenings to take refuge from the heat in the shaded grassy areas... well, last night I forgot to close the doors. I realized at 3:30 this morning when I was up feeding my youngest (3 months) and heard our dogs barking. I woke DH up, handed off a very unhappy DD and went to investigate. Only 4 of my 5 chickens were on the roost. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary (no predators, blood, or feathers) so I thought maybe she just didn't make it back from free ranging that afternoon/evening. That is, until DH went to work this morning. He told me he would look around when the sun came up and he found a raccoon "treed" on top of our dogs' pen. Every time it tried to come down our two dogs would go nuts and send it back up. We're going to get a trap from his cousins hopefully and try and catch it... I figure if nothing else they can kill it or use it to train their dogs (they go 'coon hunting a lot). DH shot it a few times with a pellet gun, but it wasn't powerful enough to do any serious damage that we could tell (I thought about getting a .22 but figured the pellet would be enough... darn. Live and learn I guess). I have had my chickens for 2 ears now and this is the first incident (aside from a HUGE rat snake stealing eggs). I'm bummed, and also nervous now since we don't have the most secure coop (DH built it for me for Valentines Day a couple years ago... he researched quite a bit, but I have since learned so much from this site that we could have taken into consideration for it). I was planning on picking up my 5 other chickens today from my friend, but I really don't want to do that until I know that this raccoon is gone and no longer a threat. This all based on the assumption that it was in fact the raccoon that got her. Seems like a pretty big coincidence, but I was under the impression they left a trail of blood and/or feathers - some form of evidence.
