War has been Declared (Graphic Pictures)

[casportpony]

Please play nice!

 

[The Moonshiner]

Please play nice!

 

[ChookieG]

They are usually very gentle and make great pets. I adopted one that on first meeting attacked when trying to feed it. It had been starved and was extremely hungry. After 3 days and lots of food it was a really sweet pet. To many people tend to get caged/ aquarium type critters and don't look up their needs or don't care. It's sad these animals suffer being starved sometimes to death

Yeah that's why you never try to buy animals from a pet supply store. They're often ill-treated. It's people who release them into the wild that has given these animals who were once pets, bad reputations. They're really just trying to survive in the wild.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

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[Laura_BelgianBantams_63]

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[The Moonshiner]

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[KingD]

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What Have you been feeding your Leghorns!?

 

[The Moonshiner]

What Have you been feeding your Leghorns!?

Ferrets

 

[kwhit]

This is a thread to document my journey to taking it to the enemy

Prefacing this story with the comment that we have very few predators here where I live.

All my runs are covered and I have a variety of different style houses for my chickens.
The coop in this story was built on skids so it could be towed around to fresh grass etc. I dont have the room to be moving it around regularly so I have built a fixed run onto the end. With the coop being on skids there is a 2 inch gap underneath the coop that something could get into if it really wanted to.

after having this coop set up for about 10 months and no sign of anything predator wise.....

I arrived at the coop to find 3 dead birds (point of lay Leghorns) They had been tried to be dragged out of the gap underneath the coop.......... necks had been cleanly slashed then chewed upon.

Spent the rest of the day digging down and boarding up the gap.

2 weeks later exactly the same thing.... 3 dead Leghorns tried to be dragged back thru holes dug under and around the boards I had put in... this time when I checked it was 9:30 in the evening and I had no time to do anything apart from put rocks and pieces of wood in the holes and think about how I could fix it the next day.

The next morning 2 more dead Leghorns.... exactly the same scenario... necks cleanly slashed, and tried to drag out another hole dug.

WAR!

I read thru most of your posts so sorry for the inconvenience and losses. Unfortunately sometimes its how we learn is from our mistakes. I live in Massachusetts between Providence and Boston. I've seen enough wildlife to know I had to make a chicken-fortknox pen but I still experienced an event similar to yours. I lost two hens through my fence and since then have lined the inside with hardware cloth/wire to prevent that slaughter again. That was three years ago now and happy to report I've not lost any hens since then. I believe we have a creature called a Fisher Cat that's of similar stature. It was either that or a coon. I also have a stationary pen one that I can't move. I buried the fencing about 18 inches below grade. I've also got heavy duty stock wire all around and on top. It was a lot of costruction but well worth it. I've had 3 different sets of layer flock so far. But pretty soon I'l have to replace my corner posts cuz they are rotting and probably my flock because they are getting older and not laying much yummy eggs.
Good luck!

 

[Lumley Farm]

were they ferrets that were released, or do they exist in the wild where you are?
ok, just looked up where the long white cloud exists,,, New Zealand!