My boyfriend recently bought a coop and we picked up 4 pullets to raise. Chickens are brand new to us as we both grew up in cities so I'm hoping to get some useful advice from folks on this site (also, please forgive me for the long post)! His house is on 10 acres in the middle of nowhere (so lots of woods all around his land) and we knew there were predators (have seen red and grey fox, raccoons, possums and hawks - know there are supposed to be coyotes and bear in the region). He thought the modified coop he'd bought was pretty solid but unfortunately it turned out not to be...
I have a photo gallery of him putting it together and setting it up here:
http://trishm.smugmug.com/Other/Chicken-Coop/11939953_XbX6G#878626857_7hMX3
The area we slipped was in the nesting box. The bottom wasn't actually fully attached (I guess it was "designed" to be easier to clean) so the other night a raccoon pushed up the bottom enough to get one of his arms in and grabbed our beautiful little "Tulip" (we don't know what types of chickens we picked up - it didn't really matter to us). We'd only had the birds a few weeks but honestly it was just devastating to us both (although almost anyone we tell is like "they're just chickens" - it's very upsetting). We are putting a new plan in place and I wanted to outline it here and see if anyone would offer any feedback. As I said, we're new to this and have just been trying to piece together what to do from surfing the web...
First, I think that the nest box itself is secure now. The bottom has been screwed tight to the rest of the box and hardware cloth has been wrapped all around the bottom too. Second, we are setting up an electric fence in a perimeter around the outside of the coop. Picked up everything at Tractor Supply including a Zareba 10 Mile AC Fencer. So far we've got a three wire fence set up with the bottom wire approx. 4-6 inches above the group and the top wire at approx. 13-16 inches. We still need to sink the three 6 ft ground rods and then we should be up and running. I have a concern about some small trees that are around 6 feet from the fence/coop. Does anyone know if raccoons are jumpers? I didn't know if to avoid the fence they would climb the trees and jump inside. Also, does the height of the fence sound good? We are debating adding 2 more wires... Third, we are (as of last night) starting to use a trap (with an open can of fishy cat food inside) hoping to at least get the raccoon that has already learned it could get in. My boyfriend set it up where he thinks the raccoon is coming in from the woods but we didn't have any success last night. Does anyone have thoughts on the best place to put a trap? Should it be really close to the coop itself? Lastly, we are now using a baby monitor to listen for any new attacks. If I hear a scratch or a peep I'm out the back door ready to fight (no, I haven't had a whole lot of sleep for several nights now). Does anyone have any experience with what I should actually be listening for? If the chickens hear a raccoon nearby are they going to start pitching a fit or will they keep quiet hoping it can't find them (or do you just never know?)?
Sorry to run on forever but we both are feeling awful about what happened to our Tulip and want to do as much as we can to avoid a repeat...
http://trishm.smugmug.com/Other/Chicken-Coop/11939953_XbX6G#878626857_7hMX3
The area we slipped was in the nesting box. The bottom wasn't actually fully attached (I guess it was "designed" to be easier to clean) so the other night a raccoon pushed up the bottom enough to get one of his arms in and grabbed our beautiful little "Tulip" (we don't know what types of chickens we picked up - it didn't really matter to us). We'd only had the birds a few weeks but honestly it was just devastating to us both (although almost anyone we tell is like "they're just chickens" - it's very upsetting). We are putting a new plan in place and I wanted to outline it here and see if anyone would offer any feedback. As I said, we're new to this and have just been trying to piece together what to do from surfing the web...
First, I think that the nest box itself is secure now. The bottom has been screwed tight to the rest of the box and hardware cloth has been wrapped all around the bottom too. Second, we are setting up an electric fence in a perimeter around the outside of the coop. Picked up everything at Tractor Supply including a Zareba 10 Mile AC Fencer. So far we've got a three wire fence set up with the bottom wire approx. 4-6 inches above the group and the top wire at approx. 13-16 inches. We still need to sink the three 6 ft ground rods and then we should be up and running. I have a concern about some small trees that are around 6 feet from the fence/coop. Does anyone know if raccoons are jumpers? I didn't know if to avoid the fence they would climb the trees and jump inside. Also, does the height of the fence sound good? We are debating adding 2 more wires... Third, we are (as of last night) starting to use a trap (with an open can of fishy cat food inside) hoping to at least get the raccoon that has already learned it could get in. My boyfriend set it up where he thinks the raccoon is coming in from the woods but we didn't have any success last night. Does anyone have thoughts on the best place to put a trap? Should it be really close to the coop itself? Lastly, we are now using a baby monitor to listen for any new attacks. If I hear a scratch or a peep I'm out the back door ready to fight (no, I haven't had a whole lot of sleep for several nights now). Does anyone have any experience with what I should actually be listening for? If the chickens hear a raccoon nearby are they going to start pitching a fit or will they keep quiet hoping it can't find them (or do you just never know?)?
Sorry to run on forever but we both are feeling awful about what happened to our Tulip and want to do as much as we can to avoid a repeat...
