Who is the culprit?!

[Intheswamp]

Relocating a raccoon, etc.,...

The captured animal gets dropped off at a foreign (to it) location. It knows nothing about forage areas nor watering areas...it is a grown animal and will require substantial nourishment. There may very well be a population of the same creature in that location. Think about how throwing a grown hen into a run of a dozen hens that don't know it...most likely it won't go well for the new hen...same thing goes with other territorial creatures. So the "relocated" animal is scrambling trying to find sustenance while always looking over his shoulder for attacks from others like himself...also, possibly having to deal with wounds from previous encounters with the same animals. Most likely a miserable subsistence.

On the other hand, there may be no adversaries waiting on the coon, etc.,. He may be let out into a raccoon paradise...plenty of forage and water. That means that there hasn't been any predatory pressure of his kind on the local wildlife and the wildlife has flourished. Suddenly, the quail nests and sparrow nests get raided, the rabbit kits in their nests are slaughtered, all kinds of other small creatures suddenly have a vicious monster in their midst. The rich wildlife population slowly dwindles. Nobody lives close by, no chickens come up missing, nobody notices...does it matter?

Whatever we do on this created earth has an impact on other creatures...both human and non-human. If we look a little bit further down the road than where we've momentarily stopped at we can get a better glimpse of the twists and turns facing us ahead. Killing an animal can be difficult, but taking stewardship of living creatures comes with responsibilities to handle problems, not to make them some other creatures' problems. Killing the coon quickly and humanely would be my choice.

 

[AllynTal]

... And yes I was going to relocate whoever I catch to a large state forest with no homes or chickens within miles. At this juncture I'd feel to bad killing another animal. Should there be more death, my thoughts might harden.

Don't relocate the animal. It's not a good idea; first what @Intheswamp said and second, it may well be illegal to do it. Moving animals from their home territory can spread diseases and unbalance an already established ecosystem. The law may prohibit you from moving the animal, especially to a state forest. If you can't dispatch it yourself, call animal control, call a neighbor, call someone; but do not relocate the animal.

 

[Howard E]

Your observation about your dog and his response to the electric fence is probably one of the strongest testimonials out there. Proof that it works. Trust that the varmints that were feasting on your birds have felt the same thing and are now forced to reconsider how much more of that they can take. Hopefully none. They want no more of that, period. Which is the goal and beauty of the electric fence. It accomplishes what we want to see.........varmints leave on their own so we don't have to kill em. You may well be able to deal with things with the fence you already have. The Kencove fence will be a very tight, but smallish perimeter and there will be maintenance issues, mainly keeping the weeds and grass from growing up tall enough to short it out. But that is the case with all of them.......some just take more maintenance than others. Advantages and disadvantages to both.

Back to trapping, if you are not willing to kill it, leave it be. Don't trap it at all. Trust the fence and do all you can with it to create as tight and secure of a perimeter as possible. Let it do the dirty work so you don't have to. Or as I like to say, live and let it be......just let it be somewhere else.

BTW, I'm thinking you had two culprits. Cats and raccoons. There were signs of both. And neither of them like electric fences.

 

[alang]

I will skip trap and try to encourage voluntary movement to more hospitable areas. My husband cut tree limbs and mowed down grass on back of run that borders on woods. He's going to knock down building and disturb den/foundation with tractor loader this weekend and put up fencing so our sheep can further clear brush around back of run. Should disturb wild animals but my neighbors cat is a jerk and won't be deterred. He terrorizes my song birds and attacks our blind Jack Russell. Ive been trying to get rid of him for 3 years.
HowardE- who do you think pulled the chicken out of coop? That's the ******* that I think will be brazen enough to take another from our barnyard if I let the girls free range again in the future. And that's who injured my "house chicken" Flo at 5 pm 2 weeks ago. Could the cat have done that part of the job? I don't know for sure if coop door was closed when attack happened because between 8 and 9 they were locked in run but not on coop and I was so tired and naive that I didn't look inside the coop to count everyone like usual because I counted at 8 pm when I locked them in run. Still guilt ridden. Its possible culprit only needed to scale fence and nose the chicken wire seam at roof apart. Hole is not more than 6" diameter. Had 5 digits on paws... Could this be the cat?

 

[Howard E]

The berry bm thing was most likely left by a raccoon and they will generally attack the heads and necks, including taking heads off and killing a whole lot of birds at once. The claw marks on the insulation (which BTW the birds don't need if the coop is working right) looks like cat's claws........a cat using it for a scratching post. Of the two, cat is mostly likely to eat the carcass and leave the head intact.

On this neighbor's cat, what do you know about the neighbor who owns the cat? Are they also jerks? If you told them what has happened with the cat on your place and that you suspect it is harming your birds, what will neighbor say or do? Defend it restrain it?

When we moved to where we are now, sellers abandoned 4 barn cats......just left them for us to deal with. Said so at the closing. They did say they had been vaccinated and spayed, so I agreed to keep and feed them, but if they got out of line, I would not hesitate to kill them. They were OK with that. One of the four moved to a neighbor's barn to take over.....eat their cat's food and kick it out. They called me, we talked, we agreed it would be killed and it was. Remaining 3 stayed put and are doing no harm, so they remain, but remain in my barn, eating our barn and field mice and not someone elses. That neighbor's cats and dogs wander over here now and then, but do no harm, so no issues with them. What the story points out is how much trouble pets can cause between neighbors. If we make the choice to have them, we assume the responsibility for their actions. This is one of the reasons roosters cause so much trouble with urban chickens. The noise they makes doesn't stop at the fence line.

There is an old farm saying that applies........"good fences make for good neighbors". That does not apply to us as much as it does to the animals we choose to keep, be it pets or livestock. They don't understand boundaries so have to be restrained within or prevented entry from without. Good neighbors understand and respect that.

Back to that electric fence. It sets the boundary and doesn't care what it zaps. That is also something no neighbor can object to. If they don't like their pets and livestock getting zapped, all they have to do is keep them away from it. Wildlife learn than lesson too.

 

[alang]

Claw marks suggest 1 trip up to roof and repeated scratching from above at precise area where roof, corner of coop/foam, and chicken wire met. This leads me to believe marks are from guilty party who pried wire off coop.

We are not on good terms with neighbor. She has screamed drunken profanities and left nasty notes about our 4 sheep bleating around supper time claiming she goes to bed early and she can't sleep with her windows open. She also boasted about the cat's hunting skills when she came over to introduce herself (pre sheep when we moved in). She told me her cat liked our farm and would be hunting on our property. She didn't want us to think he was a stray.

Tonight was the first night the hens were sleeping spread out on roosts again when I just went to check on them. Since the horrible night they watched their flock mate die, they've been afraid to enter coop and throwing themselves at the run door to escape, huddled against it. When they've been forced into the coop by darkness, they've been perched on top of one another in the corner opposite the door where the predator entered. Hoping this means all has been quiet and they are forgetting the terror. How are chickens' long term memories?

 

[ChristopherMic]

Get a Portable Radio so if the Animal hears the Noise in the day time, it wont come near the chickens. If you want to catch it, Get a Cage (I will give you a link) and put Tuna in it. You can also get Scarecrows so it will look like people are outside and then you can put the portable Radio on it.

Hope everything goes Well!

http://www.jefferspet.com/products/...E7VzgcO6-VEq_3lRbndF5bxQhdAyHOqXZrxoCdR3w_wcB

 

[Howard E]

So you don't like her cat and she does not like your sheep........and that could easily extend to her not liking something about your chickens as well if she started looking for something to be upset about. Most boundary disputes start and stop at the property line. As long as we respect property lines, we get along OK.....it's when one or both sides don't is when trouble starts. It may be an actual animal itself crossing the line, but sights and sounds and smells cause trouble too. We have an ongoing situation near us over a large proposed CAFO (confined animal feeding operation). Naturally, neighboring property owners do not want to have one of those near their homes. Cats and sheep and sometimes roosters are the same affect, just different as to scale.

But with your situation, all that has the potential to escalate into a full blown range war, so I would not overtly do anything to harm the cat (don't kill it), shoot it with BB guns or otherwise go out of your way to harass it. But again, if that electric fence is on the job, you may not have to overtly do anything. BTW, normally I would not do anything to encourage animals to touch the fence......just leave it up and running and let them find it on their own, but if one wanted to hasten the process along, you could put something they would want to sniff......say a killed bird's wing, foot, head, etc. left hanging from the fence to be sniffed or just above it such that they might put their feet on the fence to reach up to touch or sniff it. Or even paint/paste something on it like pieces of canned fish they might want to sniff. A few shots of that and they will go elsewhere. That trick might help with a lot of them....raccoons, possums, skunks, foxes, coyotes, stray dogs......stray cats......whatever.

Then for your part, do what you can about keeping your sheep as far from her place as you can. Electric fences are good for that too. A fast way to put up a temporary fence. If the day ever comes when you have some surplus eggs you don't know what to do with, a dozen or so of those left on a doorstep now and then might buy some goodwill. Or not......sometimes it is best to just let rancid neighbors be......ignore them like they don't exist. Even simple little things like free eggs that require you to set foot on their place is all it takes to set them off. With some, you just never know.

 

[Howard E]

BTW, I went looking for clues about predator kills and found two sources to suggest the mass killings of chickens we see by raccoons where they just kill a lot of them by biting off the heads is usually the work of mamma coon teaching babies how to kill. One source suggests multiple kills are just for practice. "Normally" a single raccoon will kill and eat the meat off a single bird, or at least according to those sources. If so, the way your bird was killed, removed from the coop and eaten may very well have been a raccoon, not the cat. The cat may just be an innocent bystander. Found at the scene of the crime, and perhaps hanging around, but may not be the actual culprit. Most likely it was a raccoon.

Either way, a few zaps form an electric fence will put a bad taste in the mouth of all of them regarding chickens.

 

[Intheswamp]

Get a Portable Radio so if the Animal hears the Noise in the day time, it wont come near the chickens. If you want to catch it, Get a Cage (I will give you a link) and put Tuna in it. You can also get Scarecrows so it will look like people are outside and then you can put the portable Radio on it.

Hope everything goes Well!

http://www.jefferspet.com/products/...E7VzgcO6-VEq_3lRbndF5bxQhdAyHOqXZrxoCdR3w_wcB

That's a squirrel/rat trap...gonna need one a good bit bigger.

Ed