ElaynasChick
Songster
Hello! my chicks are 7 weeks old and i just let them out of there brooder into there outdoor coop about 2 weeks ago they are now comfortable with going outside and love spending time out in the run, the run is fully covered in chicken wire and a roof, they got so comfortable that they would stay outside when it was dark outside but there was still a light inside the coop that was making it so the chickens could still see, so of course i let the chickens stay outside when it was the prime time for predators, i walked into the run to put them in the coop when i saw all of the chickens had blood on there beaks and one had a bloody chest, we have a camera in the run and we did not capture footage of the animal but we saw it ran into the fence and then we heard a chick screaming super loud, we are guessing it is a raccoon because where we live we have 8 acres of forest that has tons of raccoons and raccoons are knows to get chickens, there was no damage to the chicken wire but i think the raccoon just stuck its are through the opening of the chicken wire, i brought the chick with the bloody chest inside to find that it had two circular punctures in it's chest, almost as if the raccoon grabed it buy it's chest with it's claws, i cleaned it with warm water then put Neosporin on both gashes and i am leaving it in the garage over night in a gaylord box with food water and pine shavings, we are going to cover the bottom 4 feet of the run in quarter inch hardware cloth so this does not happen again. is there anything else i should do for the injured chick or the run??