I think it's a bobcat!

[lavacaw]

A little over a month ago, I began losing a chicken here and there. The frequency increased...I trapped two coons and dispatched them but the losses have continued. Whatever it is is big enough to carry off a full grown chicken (over a 10 foot high fence) and will not go into a trap. I am now down to two hens...looks like another bobcat. Have a couple of ideas to try but for now, I am not looking to get any more chickens until I have him GONE - permanently!

 

[Chirpy]

I am so sorry that you've lost most of your chickens. I sure hope you can catch whatever is taking them.

Do you lock up your chickens securely at night? Are they being taken during the day? Can you put a top on your run?

 

[kycklingar!]

Have you thought about owls? A great horned can take down a full-grown canada goose. Is your run covered? Where do the chooks sleep at night?
Also, raccoons can pull the chickens in pieces through the wire of the run, if it's chain link.

 

[CMV]

First you need to look into your local laws. Here in NH bobcats are a protected species. I don't know where you are at, but you may want to look into it.

Sorry about your losses. Good luck.

 

[lavacaw]

The bottom four feet of my run is 1/2 inch hardware cloth with the remainder being chicken wire going up to ten feet. There are wide strips of plastic construction mesh running across the top and stapled to the 2x4's on the top. This was done because we have hawks. The roost the chickens sleep on is 5 feet off the floor of the 8 x 12 coop. The coop is covered in tin and I dug down a foot around the outside and put 18" pieces of tin down and filled it back in with dirt to prevent digging under. BTW, the hardware cloth is buried 4-6" down all the way around. The run itself is about 40'x40'. Coons can and will climb but they usually cannot carry a chicken back up over a 10 foot fence. Whatever this is (and we have had bobcats in the past) is strong enough to do so. I am not here at night but a few nights a week so I do not close them up. The screen door to the coop is double sprung and we tried putting cement blocks in front of it to make sure nothing was going through the door. I am securing a 10 x10 x 5'high rabbit pen in the back yard and moving the chickens temporarily until we catch whatever this is.

 

[LynneP]

Sounds more like a fox or raccoon...

 

[kycklingar!]

If there's mesh over the top, how would a bobcat get in?

 

[TipsyDog]

Electric Fence. That should solve all your problems. I'm looking into one myself right now.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

We had a bobcat in our tree one night. Fearing that it would hurt my kids or animals, we called Game and Fish. They were the only outfit here that would respond at that time of evening, and accept the call. The guy show's up, says "That's a bobcat, yep." We asked if he was going to trap it and take it somewhere. He said no, that there are many, many, many bobcats along the river and they can't compete for food, so they come to easier pickings, so if he moved him, he would likely get killed by the older stronger bobcats, or he'd just come right back knowing we had food (chickens) for him. So, in the end, he shot and killed the bobcat. I was stunned. That was not what I thought the result would be when we called.

 

[Kojack]

Quote:
sounds like the right call to me. We have tons of Bobcats here now and you just can't relocate them. Its like they have a homing device in them.