Raccoon attacked my chickens, need advice.

[Kurczaklover]

I am so glad to hear your lady is improving!
I have a neighbor about half a mile away who posts on Facebook she will take in raccoons and possums that need rehoming. I have never heard of a racoon splintering wood, must be a behemoth Raccoon! Our coop is built with 2x4 and 2x6's, and we have a banger screen door with hardware cloth instead of screen Coons will open a door with a single action latch, we also put a digging fork shoved all the way into the ground in front of the door. We learned the hard way chicken wire will keep chickens in, but nothing out, the raccoons tear right through it, about 3 feet up. They are a matriarchal society, it is not over until you get a female who is significantly sized. They keep coming night after night, regardless of how many you kill, until you get her. We use a live trap baited with cat food that we do not set until the ladies are locked up for the night, and release it before we let the girls out in the morning. We have also added motion sensor solar spotlights that reset quickly. But the most effective, free deterrent is human or canine urine around the coop, though you can buy mountain lion and other predator urine in your local hunting department if you prefer. That has been a game changer.

 

[Beloved Turkey]

So sorry about your losses I’m glad one survived tjough

 

[Beloved Turkey]

I am so glad to hear your lady is improving!
I have a neighbor about half a mile away who posts on Facebook she will take in raccoons and possums that need rehoming. I have never heard of a racoon splintering wood, must be a behemoth Raccoon! Our coop is built with 2x4 and 2x6's, and we have a banger screen door with hardware cloth instead of screen Coons will open a door with a single action latch, we also put a digging fork shoved all the way into the ground in front of the door. We learned the hard way chicken wire will keep chickens in, but nothing out, the raccoons tear right through it, about 3 feet up. They are a matriarchal society, it is not over until you get a female who is significantly sized. They keep coming night after night, regardless of how many you kill, until you get her. We use a live trap baited with cat food that we do not set until the ladies are locked up for the night, and release it before we let the girls out in the morning. We have also added motion sensor solar spotlights that reset quickly. But the most effective, free deterrent is human or canine urine around the coop, though you can buy mountain lion and other predator urine in your local hunting department if you prefer. That has been a game changer.

Would you mind telling me what state your in, I’d like to see if your neighbor would be close enough for me to take my next raccoons to.

 

[Kurczaklover]

Would you mind telling me what state your in, I’d like to see if your neighbor would be close enough for me to take my next raccoons

 

[Kurczaklover]

Can we skip the middle man, just bring them directly to my house, I will offer them a fabulous last meal, and my husband can send them to see their aged relatives.

 

[Brightbird]

This will unfortunately be the last update I’ll make about the orpington. I just found her out in the chicken run dead. She wasn’t attacked by anything, there wasn’t any injuries or bite wounds or feathers tossed around. She was lying on her side with her head tossed back and legs held behind her. My dad thinks that infection may have taken her despite all the antibiotic ointments and anti-infection sprays we used on her wounds. I think she either asphyxiated or starved. Something that I thought was odd but assumed was nothing was that she’d eat for hours on end every day and yet she was very light. Now that I examined her postmortem I think she hadn’t gotten any nutrients at all from the feed somehow. Her crop felt completely empty even though I’d sat and watched her eat this morning, and she was very thin and bony. I have to wonder if that raccoon attack left her with internal damage that I hadn’t realized she had. Whenever she drank water she would shove her beak down into it and gulp without lifting her head up like chickens usually do, I don’t know too much about chicken anatomy but maybe that caused her to asphyxiate or perhaps she couldn’t get any water in her at all, I’m not sure.

She had been doing so well seemingly. She was running around just fine this morning. It almost doesn’t seem normal or real. I just hope she wasn’t in pain in her last moments. The question I’ll have to find the answer to now is what to do with our last remaining hen. I’ve heard that chickens don’t do very well on their own since they’re social animals, but I’ve also heard that moving old hens into a new flock can be too stressful for them. I’ll have to ask around for advice about it.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm sorry to hear about your hen