IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!

[Wickedchicken6]

Unfortunately, I'll never get rid of them completely. I live in a city where chickens are illegal (so are any other farm or non-domestic animals,



I'll never get rid of them completely. I live in a city where all farm and non-domestic animals are illegal. But they'd left an ordinance on the city website that has the rules for having chickens long after they'd zoned the whole city against them, and also not posted anything about the zoning until months after I'd bought the place. When they threatened a citation ($425 per day if I dudn't get rid of them, I pointed it out. The next city council meeting removed it from their site. So I got grandfathered in through the back door. Ironically, most of the eastern and northern parts of the city used to be farmland. The area I'm in used to be cherry orchards. Halfway between my street and the next one to the south, there is a 4 foot wide irrigation ditch with 2 to 3 foot banks, which is my southern boundary. It has trees and lots of bushes and undergrowth, and is part of an irrihgation system that runs east past the city border up into the mountains all the way to Pineview reservoir. Perfect raccoon highway. Plus most on either side of the ditch have a backyard of at least a 1/2 acre, and some leave all or most of it more or less wild. From Spring through Fall it's infested, Even i haven't turned mine into an actual yard. Trees and bushes along the east and west and south sides and except for the chicken coop, a bee hive, and a blueberry patch I let it grow wild except for the 2 plum trees I planted, just keeping out any real bushes that'd get more than a foot high, and mowing it twice a year. I leave it like that for the chickens, who seem to love it, although I did have to fence the blueberry bushes in to keep them out.

But this area has gotten worse over the past couple years. i'm going to try to thin the coons here out some, using dog proof traps. Hopefully, none of the feral or semi-feral cats will stick their paws into them. But I don't think they injure the animals, I know people have caught unwanted animals, like foxes, in them and released them. Don't know what I'll do with any coons I catch, I really don't want to kill them, but so far I haven't found any organization that'll take them and release them far away.

That is very true. You will never keep predators away 100% of the time, unfortunately. BUT you can keep the problem at bay by controlling it. I live on a working farm with cattle, sheep and now chickens and guineas. We grain farm. There are lots of predators 100% of the time. We own the land for a mile in every direction so I'm very aware of the amount of wildlife out there. The farms on three sides of us grow corn. Tell me about raccoons...I have no Disney stories to tell. I set catch and release traps because I can't guarantee I won't catch a cat, or a chicken (yes it happens) or something else that's not suppose to be in there. But make no mistake, that sweet faced baby raccoon is...or will be a murderer. I also don't relish in dispatching predators but unfortunately, it comes as part of the deal.

I'm sorry to hear about the one. Wyorp brought up good points about other possibilities the other chick may be facing. How's the chick doing?

 

[mobius]

See my sig for electric fence thread. Perhaps keeping chickens in coop unless supervised outside for 2-3 weeks, the coons will come around, touch the hardware cloth, get shocked and most likely will not return. Just a thought.

 

[Sarahal88]

You won't get rid of predators 100% but you might be able to get rid of a problem raccoon who is especially bold and comes in daylight. We have every kind of predator around but not all of them will venture out into the open to mess with animals in the daylight. We had a whole den of foxes right behind the house who never touched our chickens so we let them be. We had a raccoon break into the coop, and we got rid of that one and haven't had another raccoon problem yet.