Winter with Poultry (basically just raging about raccoons)

[Button Quail 123]

Well, I wanted to now what life's like for everyone here during this time of year.
Feel free to comment (including hate about raccoons)

- Button Quail 123

 

[cavemanrich]

I don't hate them

Spoiler: Truth

 

[Eggscaping]

I do hate raccoons. They tear up our small back yard pond. They killed our little, elderly, mostly deaf and blind min-pin in his own back yard. They severely injured our neighbor's cat. Two of them would try to pry the screen open to get into the little enclosed front porch area where we kept the garbage. When I'd go out to run them off with a broom, they would stand on their hind legs and hunch their shoulders and growl at me. One of them - the ringleader - was huge...on his hind legs he stood about 3 feet tall and was completely unimpressed with me waving a broom at him and shouting. He was damned intimidating. If they stay in the woods, I don't hate them, but when they come into my back yard and kill or injure my pets and tear up things I've spent money on....then yes. I hate them.

 

[pintail_drake2004]

trap those bastards and kill them. If left unchecked they do cause a lot of damage. sure wish fur prices would go up again.

 

[Button Quail 123]

cavemanrich, I try to love all animals, but certain creatures are sometimes just plain murderous.

 

[CCUK]

When two worlds collide.....

 

[Biddybot]

Ironically, I've got nothing to rage about when it comes to raccoons because ours are hibernating right now. Won't see 'em again until spring. Even then, the vast majority hereabouts have nothing to do with us humans and live out their lives in the thousands of acres of prime coastal habitat nearby that are protected and part of our provincial park systems, and those are the raccoons I enjoy having around and watching when I go off to ramble around in the woods. Then there are the minority whose greed for food overcomes their natural caution and who become just plain pests and potentially dangerous ones at that, the sort even our own wildlife people advise you get rid of because once they're habituated to associate people with food, then that's it...they NEVER give it up and return 'to the wild', as it were. Not that I blame them, either. From a raccoon's perspective, it must be so much easier to dump out a tube full of sunflower seeds or snag a fat hen than to toddle down to the local pond to catch a frog, no matter HOW many frogs that pond may have to offer up.

What I find most interesting is how cyclic my own problems with raccoons have been. Years go by and I never see them except the odd glimpse of one working a shoreline or running away from me in the woods. Then something like this past summer happens...I suddenly get whole families, even a whole colony raiding my bird feeders and trying to get in at the garbage and chickens. Where do they come from? Probably from further on up or down our one road, where they've learned to plague my neighbours and now are expanding their territory to include me. The most number of raccoons I ever had to trap was 13 and that was a proper colony, one huge adult male and a couple of big females plus juveniles of both sexes. This past summer was the second worst, two families consisting of a mom plus youngsters, and the moms were teaching the kids how to raid the feeders and green bins! Curiously, once you do trap out these sorts of habituated problem raccoons, it often takes quite a while, years sometimes, before new ones show up to fill in the supposed vacuum. Which just confirms my belief that most coons are good guys who'd just as soon stay wild and avoid mankind. I suspect it's mainly stupid people feeding them and trying to entice them closer to their houses that gets the problem cycles started in the first place. I kind of hate people like that, to be honest.

Well, you wanted some rambling comments about racoons, so there you go! Now, what to do about that equally WAY too tame fox who's been visiting my yard at night and who thinks nothing of trotting right past me even though I'm standing right there with a flashlight five feet away...! (One of the unfortunate realities of winter here, alas...have to leave my laneway gate open to accommodate the ice and snow...)

 

[Chickassan]

I don't hate them. I don't hate any wildlife. I would prefer that it all stay out of my backyard or if it does come around not to destroy anything or eat anybody.
I'm fairly tolerant, so far this winter iv'e had a squirrel run up my body twice and iv'e acquired a pet skunk.
I have sadly had to dispatch one raccoon that was set on entering the coop. I didn't want to but it wasn't giving up the dream of a fat chicken dinner, and i'm really fond of my fat chickens.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

i don't like raccoons with chickens but i like them when am trapping lol.

right now coons are pretty much up in there dens till it warms up. so don't have to deal with them. however i can catch, skin and sell the pelts they don't bring in much (right now that is) but still i get around 8-10 dollars per pelt (and i suck at skinning and fleshing)

 

[Chickassan]

I gave mine away to a fella who wanted a pecker necklace.

i don't like raccoons with chickens but i like them when am trapping lol.

right now coons are pretty much up in there dens till it warms up. so don't have to deal with them. however i can catch, skin and sell the pelts they don't bring in much (right now that is) but still i get around 8-10 dollars per pelt (and i suck at skinning and fleshing)