moveable chicken pen and raccoon attacksgreenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread |
We have been having a problem with racoons grabbing our meat birds out from under the moveable chicken pens. This morning three birds were missing and one was wounded. The dumb chickens sleep right next to the sides of the cage, and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas as to how to keep the chickens away from the edges. If they slept in the middle, the racoons couldn't reach them. The cage is 8X8 and covered with chicken wire. Other than reaching under in small divits in the ground, there is no way a racoon can get in. We are having the same problem with our turkeys, but their cage is larger and they have roosts in there. They don't always use them though. Any ideas? Mary
-- Mary Fraley (kmfraley@orwell.net), June 28, 2001
Run some "hot" electric fence wire around the outside a couple of inches above the ground. Put the standoffs on your bottom 2x4.
-- Steve Nelson (alpine1@prodigy.net), June 28, 2001.
Hot wire is good but some of us just can't get that together. The Poultry Connections Leghorn Forum has lots of chicken experts that can help with this. What I can tell you as a person who rehabs raccoons and has ducks(and never the twain has met!)is I NEVER use chicken wire for anything that I want to keep poulty safe in. It is useless for anything except keeping non-flying poultry IN. It keeps nothing OUT. You will find a lot of postings re poultry safety on that forum, but what works for me is making all my overnight pens out of welded wire with openings no larger than 1 inch by 1/2 inch. Some people have had success with using 1/2 inch by 1/2 hardware cloth. I don't trust this to be tough enough for coyotes, bobcats and foxes and the like but I could be wrong. I also like wire laying on the ground all around the pen protruding out at least 24 inches from the sides to confound any digging predators. Hope this helps you. It is no fun to lose your chickens. :-)
-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), June 28, 2001.
I don't know how many chickens are in there or if this would work, but how about suspending a rod or perch from the center and about 18 inches from the sides. Would look like a trapeze but use scrap pieces of wood for the verticles for strength. Maybe even a couple if you have lots of chickens. They should go up on these at night instead of roosting on the ground.If you go with the electric wire as in the above post, you might consider a battery operated one as you probably move it around a lot. More convenient that way.
-- Kate henderson (kate@sheepyvalley.com), June 28, 2001.
Funny you should ask- I lost 24 6 week old Anconas two nights ago because I apparently neglected to plug in the fence charger after evening feeding. A raccoon tore a hole in the side of the pen, through the chicken wire. The next morning all 24 were missing. I find it hard to believe that a raccoon, even a family of them, could account for that many chickens, but I think maybe the resident fox might have helped. But, the electric fence always worked as long as it was plugged in. I agree with the above assessment of the chicken wire- I will never use it again. Try the hardware cloth. Also, my stupid chickens always slept in the SE corner of their pen- if yours sleep in the same spot every night maybe you could put something solid in that corner, like plywood, sheet metal, roofing tin, plastic panels, etc.
-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), June 28, 2001.
Elizabeth, just about anything can bite through chicken wire and get into the pen that way. Also, a number of predators can squeeze right through a 1 inch by 1 inch wire opening as amazing as it sounds! The members of the weasel family are champs at this including the beautiful spotted skunk. Durn, I think every predator out there just loves chickens and ducks! :-)
-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), June 28, 2001.
I have five havahart traps around my pen and it works wonders. Wish I had more to use but thats all I have. I put them about a foot in on the corners that seems to work very nicely and the fifth one is back to back with any other one of your choice. I am averaging at least one critter every six days. I wish it would stop already.
-- Mary (marwel@microserve.net), June 28, 2001.
Hi Mary, I had the same problem just a few weeks ago. The first night that I put my four week old chicks in the truck pen, something came along and killed and ate four plus bit the head off of another and it was laying in the middle dead. The second night I baited a havahart trap with the headless chicken. When I got up the next morning I found that my trap was missing, plus another chicken was gone. I still have not found that trap yet. After that I bought some chicken wire and wrapped it around my portable pen which already had 2x4 welded wire on it. And then my wife and I posted gard duty. We had placed the pen close to our bedroom window . That night my wife woke me up and said something is bothering the chickens. So I grabbed Bessy (double barrel shotgun) and I snuck around the house and had my wife to count to ten and then turn the back porch light on. When she did there was the biggest boar coon that I've ever seen. I dispatched it and I think it probably weighed 30 pounds. A couple of nights later the same thing happened, but this time it was a smaller coon that I ended up just wounding but it has never been back since. That was about 4 weeks ago and I haven't had any problems since.
-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 28, 2001.
Thanks everyone. We've put the cage so we can hear it nights, and have chased off several coons. We have a trap and caught one coon the other day and my husband shot it. Maybe the hardware cloth is what we need. I think, though, that the coons are reaching under the cage to get the birds. Mary
-- Mary Fraley (kmfraley@orwell.net), July 05, 2001.