So SAD!~

Hi everybody,

I haven't posted here much, but read lots of great advice and enjoyed all the chicken stories. Today is a SAD day in our VT household. We live in bear country, so we are always careful to close the coop at night, keep the feed inside the closed garage and we don't feed birds after the weather changes and the snow starts to melt. Of course we never thought a bear would actually break into our coop to eat the chickens, maybe the feed, but not the birds. Ignorant attitude that was!

Last night I closed the coop right at dusk, once the hens(and couple of roosters) were inside. This morning while sipping my coffee I noticed one of the roosters making lots of racket. He likes to make his presence known anyway, but this time seemed very loud. Looking out from the kitchen window I noticed him and one hen walking around. This surprised me as I was sure I had closed and latched the door the previous night. Out I went. When I got to the coop (basically a large shed with half reserved for cordwood and the other half for the birds) I noticed the light wouldn't come on. After returning with a flashlight I saw the carnage. Back outside I saw birds carcasses all over the place. More careful inspection and I saw bear prints everywhere as well as a couple of piles of obvious bear scat. All in all we lost 6 out of our 10 birds. We have 2 roosters left and 2 hens. The worst was that my daughter was just crazy about these chickens. We have had predator attacks before and one of our oldest chickens survived them all and was her absolute favorite. They used to sit on the swing together and she'd just pet her and talk to her. She was beside herself this morning upon the news of Pringle's demise.

Not sure what to do with the bear. My wife told me she saw him running after the remaining chickens just now (at 3-pm) and I have called the game warden. It's just so sad to see my daughter missing her birds. Now what? I don't know if I want to get more chickens. My wife is scared this will happen again. Maybe it's time to build fort knox for new birds. We had some really cute ones and the relationship my daughter had with them can't be replaced.

Thanks for listening/reading.

Paul

 

Thank you all so very much for the kind words. I really appreciated. I'll keep you posted as to how things pan out with the game warden. It sounds like the electric fence is the way to go. My daughter is already pleading with my wife to allow her to get new chickens. So we'll see how that pans out. First we need some time to get over the shock.