Michigan

[RBahmer]

Two words: zinc lozenges.  
I know i harp on them a lot, but they really do kick the cold right out of you, and if you start on them at the first sign you won't even get the cold. Just eat first, they can be a bit hard on an empty stomach.  Also, any spicy food. Burns it right out. DH makes tomato soup and puts cayenne pepper in it, with a bunch of parmesan cheese in it. Works!  

For the record, i don't hate the coons.   Just the ones that go out of their way to try to eat my livestock. Remember, the ones we have around currrently also dragged the neighbor's flemish giant out of her burrow and ate her too, so even the rabbits are not immune. 
  ................  Supposing they quit pestering my coop i will leave well enough alone, but the nightly tracks tell me i am going to lose some chickens somehow if i don't deal with this.  Every night is them trying something new, and eventually they will find a way in.  Wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have hands. ....:Sigh.:  
eta. that i have a CAMPER and that's still not safe. I could put hardwire cloth on the windows, but if they want in bad enough.... and if i can open the windows from the outside that means they could too.  We didn't have this many till this year, so i don't think that it is futile.

X 2

 

[swampducks]

I've tried the zinc lozenges several times. Don't do squat for me or DH. Perhaps it's a metabolism thing or genetic. Like I'm allergic to all kinds of pollen but NOT ragweed.

 

[Juise]

I'm with the secure coops crowd... Raccoons are very intelligent and quite strong, but they aren't actually supernatural. I'll take that back when something gets into my coop,

but so far we have had chickens about a year and a half and have had a big fat 0 in losses, despite the fact that their coop is out in the woods, the coop and run have a dirt floor, I leave the door to the run open all night, and the chickens free range all day.

I expect to lose someone eventually during the day... as Nova can attest, you see a hawk over our house practically every time you look up, but they also have a lot of cover from large, established perennials and trees. I will be very surprised if we lose someone at night, though.

Hardware cloth is very strong, as long as the way it is attached is as strong as the material itself is, I do not believe anyone is getting in. Ours is attached to wood that is in good shape, with fence staples and screws with fender washers. The run is enclosed entirely in hardware cloth with the exception of the floor, and there is a 3 foot hardware cloth apron all the way around both coop and run. Not only does the door to the run latch tightly and "out of reach", I don't trust to out of reach and I lock it with a padlock every night. Not a big fancy padlock, it doesn't have to be, just a little cheapy.

I think a raccoon could figure out how to climb the hardware cloth and manipulate the latch. I am pretty sure they are not going to figure out how to come in my house, get the key down from where it hangs by the door, and go back out to unlock the coop.

Yes, I am pretty confident. No, I don't think there isn't any possible way anything could ever get into my coop. But I will be very, very surprised. Part of my confidence comes from knowing that my set up has been tried many, many times, by pretty much every predator we have around here, and those are just the times I have caught something. I am sure that it is tried most nights. I know we have raccoons and opossums come in the back porch any night I put the cat food out, and have had a fox come to the cat door, too.

I dragged one of my cats in last night at 4am because he was making so much noise having a tussle with something. He had it cornered in the barn that shares a wall with my coop. I couldn't find a light and I wasn't about to go in a pitch black barn with a mystery creature, so I just left it. I won't say I wasn't at all worried, knowing that I was leaving something out there that was assuredly in the middle of trying to get into my coop, but I wasn't worried enough to go back out and check when I did finally find the lantern, simply because I know it goes on all the time, I just don't normally know.

If raccoons could get into anything if only they wanted to badly enough, we would have them in our houses all the time. However, the only time I have had raccoons in my house is when I left the door open. It didn't matter that I was there, in fact, it didn't matter that I was sitting right next to the cat food it wanted. It just walked in, walked over, and helped itself.

There, have I reminded everyone yet that they don't actually miss having me around?

 

[rocksteady]

howdy folks !
i am in Montrose
new to the chicken thing!
i am a 14 and half year veteran of the Army and finally got to come home to michigan
and relized i have lots of spare time so got the wife to let me get chickens ...she asked why i said i want eggs!!!

as promised here are some pics of my Birds







can anyone help me ID the rooster and hens? lol i got told what they are but forgot lol

 

[babigyrl22]

I mix my oyster shell right into my 50 lb. bag of feed. Just scoop and serve. It seems at times that they eat the feed & leave the shell. Other times they seem to eat it. They seem to know when their bodies need it. As for the egg breakers can't really say much except when it happened to me a couple of times I just made sure I collected several times throughout the day and made sure I cleaned the nest out well so there were no remains of the broken eggs. Hate when that happened....a slimey mess!

I have to say I agree with trefoil, killing coons is an exercise in futility as removing the ones at your house 1. Opens the territory for more to move in and 2. Reduces population pressure, which causes females to have more and bigger litters. It is completely possible, although more expensive, to build coon-proof housing.
However, raccoons definately carry rabies, they (along with skunks and bats) are one of the primary sources of rabies encounters. Use caution when handling them, even if dead - gloves are a wise idea.
Babygirl my eggs have been thinner-shelled since using flock raiser. Now that my young birds are all over 14 weeks I have been thinking about mixing a little layer in with the flock raiser.
If you feed egg shells back to your birds, crush them up so that they don't look like eggs anymore or you may end up with egg eaters.

Yep. Mine are on Flockraiser because of the different ages on my birds but maybe they are old enough now that I can just add in the oystershell into their feed until I am ready to move them all bay to layer pellets. They are causing a mess and they usually eat the eggs if they get broken. Thanks for the advice!

 

[RaZ]

Welcome home, Rocksteady.
The hens look like my ISA browns, not sure about the rooster...



So who wants to help me set 40 feet of privacy fence panels???

 

[RBahmer]

howdy folks !
i am in Montrose
new to the chicken thing!
i am a 14 and half year veteran of the Army and finally got to come home to michigan
and relized i have lots of spare time so got the wife to let me get chickens ...she asked why i said i want eggs!!!

as promised here are some pics of my Birds







can anyone help me ID the rooster and hens? lol i got told what they are but forgot lol

Welcome to BYC. The first one looks like a dark brahama and the second pic looks like Isa browns and the rooster - don't know.

 

[chickflick]

to all the newbies!! Great place to be.

 

[M.sue]

can anyone help me ID the rooster and hens? lol i got told what they are but forgot lol

1. Pretty hen 2. brown hens 3. Handsome Rooster.....

JK I think the others have already answered your question and WELCOME!!

 

[rocksteady]

thanks for the fast replies
and the id's