My first time quarantining a chicken

[DonyaQuick]

Feels much better now letting everybody out to forage for a bit while I'm doing outdoor chores. The hens stay together better with Ziggy watching the perimeter.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Just to update on this, should anyone stumble across this later. This is a thing I had just casually remarked on in an earlier post:

I set the auto-door to open obscenely early so that if there is any drama at first light, they can shoot out into the secure part of the run to have more space.

That step turned out to be completely unnecessary and I probably shouldn't have done it. Ultimately I think it attracted predators in two instances, and I'm pretty sure there was never any in-coop drama that would have necessitated earlier-than-normal access to the run. Everyone is fine because they only have access to a secure, hardware cloth-covered area when the auto door opens (otherwise I wouldn't have done it in the first place). I have to manually give them access to a larger, less secure area later. I have now switched back to having the auto-door open 1/2hr after the sun comes over the hills like I used to do and will keep it that way.

Dawn or first light currently happens around 5AM here. Sunrise is closer to 6AM. During integration, I had set the auto-door to open at 5:10 if I recall. A few days went by and nothing out of the ordinary happened, then I had a cat and a fox respectively.

The cat has been a long-term nuisance for me; I know it well. It's not a very big cat so not a big risk to my adult birds but it was a big pain when they were younger and smaller. Every snowfall it left tracks showing that it comes through daily around dawn and makes a pass right past the front door to the house. One morning around 5:15 I heard a hen scream, then I heard Ziggy roar and come thundering out of the coop, and then very clearly a cat hiss and other angry cat noises and sounds of scampering back into the woods. Good job Ziggy.

The next day started the same although a bit later, more like 5:40 - hen screaming, Ziggy charging out, but then there were some bizarre noises from him and the hens I have never heard before along with something striking the hardware cloth. When I got to the window there was a skinny, generally not-so-great-looking fox by the coop. It wanted to approach the coop but kept being startled and backing off. I couldn't get a good view of everything but Ziggy was full fight mode, so I assume he was the one striking the hardware cloth since the fox never got closer than about 8ft away. I grabbed my great pyrenes puppy and charged out with her, and the fox evaporated as soon as it saw her nose poke out the door. I guess the girls all went back in the coop since Ziggy was the only one out. I've never seen fox tracks in mud or snow around the coop before (although there are 2 that live in the area; I've seen tracks in the forest) so I have to assume the noise of hens coming out and doing chicken things earlier than normal is what attracted this one over.

Anyway...all is well but just wanted to follow up on that because it was the one notable negative I encountered in the integration process. If I have to repeat the process in the future with another flock or adding new birds to my current one, I won't be changing the auto door setting like I did this time.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Anyway...all is well but just wanted to follow up on that because it was the one notable negative I encountered in the integration process. If I have to repeat the process in the future with another flock or adding new birds to my current one, I won't be changing the auto door setting like I did this time.

Wow, scary!

I do do the "set pop door to open early, just in case" as when I'm integrating it's with pretty small chicks (4 weeks old or so), so there's some level of risk when they're cooped up with the adults for the first time as there's no real hiding places in most coops. I usually do it for about a week, and haven't had issues doing it that way, but I know there is a level of risk in doing so, especially since my run is not fully predator proof.