Luckily living in such an urban environment, we don't have many birds of prey that look to make a meal out of our Orps. I've been super concerned about hawks and such since I started breeding bantams, but luckily so far *knocks on wood* they haven't been an issue.
...that said, raccoons are our most prominent predators. There's a storm drain at the end of our block that a family of coons live in. They come out of it nightly and go down into the creek that runs parallel to our property to feed, drink, etc. Our coops are locked up tight, built with hardware cloth, and are all built without underground access.
We've only ever lost one bird to a raccoon, she had unknowingly flown down into the creek and didn't get put away at night with the others. We had sat down to dinner and heard a terrible squawking coming from outside, I ran out to the coop to check on the birds and nothing seemed to be wrong. The next morning when I checked the creek there were white feathers everywhere...
I've since learned my lesson to double count everyone before closing up the coops in the evening.
...that said, raccoons are our most prominent predators. There's a storm drain at the end of our block that a family of coons live in. They come out of it nightly and go down into the creek that runs parallel to our property to feed, drink, etc. Our coops are locked up tight, built with hardware cloth, and are all built without underground access.
We've only ever lost one bird to a raccoon, she had unknowingly flown down into the creek and didn't get put away at night with the others. We had sat down to dinner and heard a terrible squawking coming from outside, I ran out to the coop to check on the birds and nothing seemed to be wrong. The next morning when I checked the creek there were white feathers everywhere...
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