eleven of my hens we killed last night. I don't know if it was a racoon,possum,or skunk. some of the heads we off and some wern't. Two of them were bit on the side. They we just about to start laying. What do you think it was and what can i do about it.

gail in okla.

-- myra gail akins (dakins@cottoninternet.net), September 03, 2001

Answers

Gail, not much you can do about the varmits but you can maybe do some work on your henhouse. Make sure it is tight and nothing can get in and make sure they are shut up at night. Sorry about your loss. I know you are looking forward to too many eggs. Seems like it takes a long time to get them up this far. What a shame to loose some of them.

-- Belle (gardenbelle@terraworld.net), September 03, 2001.

Only predator that has did me in thus far has been a dog; after coming home to that carnage i erected an electric fence around the entire coop. So i can't tell what killed your hens, but i do know whatever did it now knows you provide chicken dinner & will likely be visiting again.

If you can, put up an electric fence. i have 2 wires strung....one about 4" from the ground to keep varmints from digging under the coop, the other wire about 4' up to keep anything from ripping through the poultry wire. i have a insulated latch that allows the door area to still be protected by the wire & so i can unlatch it to open the door. in short, i've built a fortress. discovering dead chickens is no fun and i had no intentions of letting that happen again (so far the hot wire has proved successful).

Until you can get some sort of permanent/more reliable protection for your coop, set a live trap out and see what you catch. that varmit will be back.

Sorry you lost your hens, & i'm hoping you lose no more!

-- Buk Buk (bukabuk@hotmail.com), September 03, 2001.

Really sorry for your loss, I just came in from giving two stray cats a good case of lead poision. Yhey got in to the hen house last night, only got two, but came back tonight for seconds. I know it was the cats as one was good enough to leave me a calling card. I have 12" of heavy 1" mesh wire buried in the ground all the way around, but they had dug under it. Hope you can get yours tightened up.

-- al (almiyo@gsiwave.com), September 03, 2001.

Gail it sounds like it may have been a racoon. Judging from my experience. Here while back I had a racoon coming up in the middle of the night and doing the same thing to mine. He would reach in through the wire and grab one and pull it to the fence and then eat the head off and then go after another one. He finally got a case of lead poisoning one night. Can you tell if something actually entered into the coop? If not then it could very well be a racoon. I also have heard that skunks will do the same thing.

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), September 03, 2001.

I say it was racoon. They don't kill one and eat it, they just like to kill. I wouldn't mind so much if they ate what they killed, but hate waste. I agree with the electric fence. Once they get out of the habit, they usually don't come back. I also lock my hens up tight at night to deter predators.

-- Dee in NJ (gdgtur@goes.com), September 03, 2001.

Gail, My sincere condolences on the loss of your 11 hens. The number one "critter" around this part of Kansas is the 'possum. they can climb over fences and into your coop and kill or maim your chickens. The electric fence sounds pretty good. An outside dog really discourages them too. A baby monitor in the chicken house would alert you to any disturbances early enough to take the good old 410 out and fix the problem. Good luck.

-- Karen (kansasgoats@iwon.com), September 04, 2001.

If you can close the survivors in a safe place, take some of the fresh dead birds, put them in a pile and smooth sand in all directions around the pile. The next AM you'll have a good set of tracks to tell you what and how many came calling as quite often they'll come back for more. That gives you information you can use to secure your hens homeplace. We found we had a racoon mama once and seven babies all raiding at the same time. That was a very expensive summer for me until we finished erecting Fort Chicken with corn cribbing wire above and below ground.

-- Sandra Nelson (Magin@starband.net), September 04, 2001.

We did the same thing as Sandra. We were losing two chickens a night to something. We closed all the hens in the coop and put fresh dirt around the closed door so we would know what it was by the tracks. It was a racoon. My dad borrowed a .22 and was going to sit out the next night and wait for it, but we found it that morning in a tree beside the chicken run and shot it. We only had one other racoon come into our yard and the dogs kept it in a tree for a week until it finally escaped. Never saw a racoon in our yard since.

-- Rebekah (rebekah_swinden@hotmail.com), September 04, 2001.

We have had possums kill chickens in the manner that you describe. Over the years, I have lost more chickens to possums than all other pests combined, and that includes fox, coyotes, dogs, hawks, owls, skunks, raccoons, rats, and weasels, to name a few. Skunks were 2nd, and raccoons a distant third. Lead poisoning when I was alerted by late night noises from the coop was the sual method of control.

Jim

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), September 05, 2001.

A friend once lost over a hundred chickens in one night to raccoons, they can and will tear through chicken wire, you must use hardware cloth, not chicken wire, to build a stout chicken house!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), September 08, 2001.

This is the time of year that the mother raccoons are teaching their young to fend for themselves, so you get a lot more killing than eating while they learn the ropes. At the petting farm where I used to work, we would have to close chickens in plastic dog crates inside their coops at night since the coops were made with 1x1 wire and the raccoons could reach through the holes. It was always most unpleasant to have to deal with the frantic teenager who found the carnage the morning after, then make sure there weren't any parts laying around for small children to bring to their parents (look mommy, I found a lucky chicken's foot!). We're lucky here in Maine since our climate isn't friendly to opossums (although they do survive here).

-- Sheryl in Me (radams@sacoriver.net), September 08, 2001.