Who killed my rooster? (GRAPHIC CONTENT Warning )

[NagemTX]

I had a coon scare this morning. Went out to check the birds and a coon was in one of my coops. None injured or deaf so I was very lucky.

It was attracted by cat food as they like to come up to the back porch and eat the cats food.

Can't stress enough to have skirting of hardware cloth around the coop. I didn't on the one it got into. It dug a hole to get in.

 

[fowltemptress]

Thank you, yeah it really does suck but at this point I also want to protect my other chickens if it is a raccoon. Do I just set a up a humane catch and release trap, or like somehow distract it with like cat food or something.

Cat food will just teach it and other raccoons/predators that your area is a buffet and draw them in. If you trap it, you need to kill it. One of the worst things you can do with raccoons is release them elsewhere, which spreads disease and creates a problem for the people and/or wildlife in the new area.

 

[Emmaloveschickens9156]

Coon. Trap it with cat food or eggs.

 

[Emmaloveschickens9156]

we never knew we had coons til about 3-4ish months ago: we set a trap, because there was coon hair under our fence, and coons on the camera.. and a taken (dead) chicken… set a trap every night for about a week and caught about 7 coons. We set that trap til no more came. My people wouldn’t kill them, so we relocated them all FAR away. I know we have possums and cats, but I had no idea we had coons.