Well, I figured its time to update this thread. Due to the high cost of the carpenters cloth it has yet to be installed and I shouldn't have waited. This spring I purchased 3 new baby chicks. Last Saturday I gave one away since it turned out to be a rooster. Sunday morning the chickens were out free ranging in the yard about 8am and a raccoon ate my barred rock. After that I have been getting up every 2hrs to check for raccoons. Then Tuesday morning at 4:45 I saw one outside the coop. I ran and grabbed my bathrobe then loaded my .22cal pellet gun. When I slid open the sliding glass door the raccoon ran up to the top of the fence and looked right at me. His mistake! I put the crosshairs on his head and dropped him with one shot. The downside was my chicken was already dead. He grabbed it through the fence. :-( So now I am going to get the cloth with a credit card and also looking at electrifying the top edge of my wood fence to keep them out of the yard. This has been frustrating since I am new to keeping chickens. It's a lot of work to raise them inside the house during the winter because they make a mess. Currently I only have two of the 6 I have raised. From now on I am just going to buy pullets. Oh, and make my a new hat with a ringed tail.
Oh no!!! Raccoon's are just awful !
I just shot a 35# coon the other week trapped in my Dukes cage
