Tonight 11pm my dog woke me up to go outside. While outside waiting for her I heard a commotion in the open shed where some of my older hens roost. I got flashlight and a stick and went into the chicken yard to find one of my hens in the yard acting nervous and distressed. I looked in the shed and saw a handful of chest feathers on the ground, then lurking in the corner perched on a cinder block was a possum. I am still in my PJs and it’s been real wet so footing is slippery. I used the stick to chase the possum into the hollow of the cinder block and I piled bricks on top of him to hold him down. Tomorrow morning I will go out and shoot it, if it’s still alive. I don’t like making an animal suffer overnight punned down in a hole by bricks and rocks, but to dispatch him now, at night, in the mud, I might wind up slipping in the mud and putting a bullet into my own foot instead of the possum. At nearly age 70 I am not as agile as I used to be. The hen it attacked was a broody hen trying to hatch some eggs in late summer. It was attacked in a nest box where she was sitting on 4 eggs. No blood that I could see, and after recovering it’s senses, the attacked hen hopped on one of the other henhouses and then up into the Douglas fir tree that most of my birds roost in. We lost another hen about a month ago- I wonder if this same possum was the culprit. I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow to find that it dug it’s way out of that hole, but I don’t think it will. We shall see.
You don’t close up your older hens at night?
