Possum in the Coop!

[CaliFarmsAR]

View attachment 3038364
Me too, my sister and I joke that she is a camera hog because she has gotten right up in it when I photograph my other chickens.
Here's what her back feathers look like.View attachment 3038370

I can’t get over how beautiful she is!!!!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

Just wanted to update you guys. One of the panels of hardware cloth had come nearly all the way off, so I re attached that. Then I put a board over that as a second way of holding it down.

I also put some boards over the gaps under the eaves. That's just a temporary fix, since that's one of our sources of ventilation and our coop does get quite warm in the summer. I didn't have time to cut hardware cloth to fit under the eaves and attach it, so that's what I'll do this week.

Finally, I wrapped the front end of the coop in a wide sheet of small hole chicken wire and nailed boards over top of the wire so it couldn't get ripped out.

There are no holes around the bottom of the coop.

I'm camping tonight, and I feel pretty confident the possum can't get back in. We will see tomorrow afternoon, but I do have a friend checking in on them tomorrow morning.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

...
Finally, I wrapped the front end of the coop in a wide sheet of small hole chicken wire and nailed boards over top of the wire so it couldn't get ripped out.
....

A
I should have taken pictures, since I'm not sure how to describe this.

The front gable of the coop has slats. I wrapped the chicken wire cloth around the front end the gable.

Then I nailed a board on each side of the gable to hold the wire in place using the nails and the pressure of the board. The way I did it looks like the wire is sandwiched between trim.

I also put a board across the front at the point where the corners of the roof meet the sides of the coop. That piece also bridges the gap that the sagging gate was making.

The sagging gate itself is currently being held shut. On the ground it's wedged with a landscape brick, the kind people use in retaining walls. On the gate's top corner, a bungee cord is stretched tight and hooked to the freshly re secured hardware cloth.

Oh, and on the other side of the coop there is a back door for egg collection that I decided to nail shut, since they don't use that area for laying anymore. Its latch was getting worn out.

By the way, this is the area in my coop that the possum was in. This roofed in area was added by Joseph last October after our neighbors replaced the fence, and they gave us the old boards to use for projects.

Below this is an 8 foot by 4 foot wired in area, and behind is the original coop house. You can see them better (but not great) in this picture, which was taken at a wonky angle. My back yard is actually level:

These are before pictures, how my coop looked before I repaired it/secured it today.

Anyway, I've been doing other improvements to my chicken coop but this thread is about the possum, what happened, and what I'm doing about it. I will take more pictures tomorrow when I get home! thanks for reading an I'm glad you guys seem to like nutmeg. I've got other pretty chooks too

Emerald (Black Australorp) Chica (Buff Orpington)

Cutie (Easter Egger, lays a warm green egg)

Spooky (Easter Egger, blue egg) Bluey and Bingo (white face black Spanish x mosaic, sisters)

Jeffrey (Cochin x Mosaic, Nutmeg's half brother)