Official BYC Poll: The Worst Predator

[jeska180]

My chickens only fear so far was a mink
Hes gone now, hopefully they stay safe!

 

[wildspurs]

Mine would have to be birds of prey Especially hawks. About any ground preadator you can fix with a gun but all birds of prey are federally protected.

 

[Muddy]

We lost over a dozen chickens in a short period of time about a year or two ago. When we finally caught an animal, it was a raccoon. Did away with it, and the losses stopped immediately. It's hard to believe a little raccoon could do so much damage.

 

[teresa42299]

snakes.we lost many eggs to snakes and almost 3 chickens.

 

[Sjisty]

Our newest predator - yup, that's our driveway it is leaving. No missing chickens, yet.

 

[20736]

Holy Spit!

 

[KWSRetMSgt]

The only predator problems I've had so far was a week ago (May 25) when placing my young 5.5 week old chicks into the coop (divided) from the 12 week girls , everything went well for 3 days when I went out on the fourth morning and found a 3.5 ft Rat Snake in the coop half containing my young girls. The &*^% killed three and was attempting to eat one when I found them. I don't normally kill snakes unless their dangerious, but being a lil ****** off and very upset the snake didn't make it out of the coop.

So now were down to eight (8) and I'm buying some more hardware cloth to reinforce the lower half of the run. It killed both of my heavy pullets, what we thought were Buff Orpingtons, but actually I believe they were Red Stars, and one (1) of my Barred Rocks.

Ok everyone keep your ladies safe, KWS

 

[chickbird]

just went out to move a chicken that had hatched out 5 little ones in aplace that i felt they would not last thru the night. put them into a large brooder and i had sat two cardboard lids on top, went to move the lids and saw a small chicken snake in one of the lids, did not really have anything handy to kill it, laid the other lid on top and tried to hit it between the lids, but it got away, it was about 2 ft but pencil thin and had gotten in between the snake netting i have in lots of places, must have been so small as to not get tangled, i don't like any snakes, so tomorrow i'll be cleaning up and looking under everything, and putting in more netting to try to catch him as there must be a large one that can get the biddies.

 

[chickbird]

Depends how hungry they are.
I once saw a video of a fox get into a coop that had a 10' high fence with electric fencing at the base and at the top. It worked for over a half hour till it succeeded.

i had a large red fox that tried to get in and he got caught in my snake netting and proceeded to bite the electric fence, he did not make it.

 

[tadpole98]

Might say man since we do kill alot, but we eat roughly 70% of what we kill. Weasels eat nothin'!