Well, unfortunately there were some casualties while we were away.
A record number of casualties to be exact.
According to the Handsome Husband, White Fatty was killed by Ricky {the evil} Raccoon on the first night we were gone. He didn’t have the heart to tell us while were we away, so he waited until we got back. Monkey Boy buried her.
As The Girl and I were walking towards the backyard, we began to notice a few more chickens were missing as well. Crazy Fat, Blondie and Buffy were gone too.
Within about a 2 week period, we have lost 5 chickens {Peanut went MIA 2 weeks ago}.
40% of our flock.
Now I know these things happen from time to time, but still, 5 chickens in 2 weeks? Not cool.
Not cool at all.
The strange thing about all of this, is out of the 5 chickens we lost, only 1 of their bodies has been discovered. Which is unusual for Ricky the Raccoon. It almost makes me wonder if he has a buddy, or a partner in crime helping him.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It won’t bring our sweet little chickens home. But I’ll tell you one thing, we are headed to the hardware store this afternoon to buy some more bird netting. This time we are going to put a double layer on the top of the entire chicken yard. If that doesn’t work, well, I guess we will have to add chicken wire to the top or something.
Anyway you slice it. Raccoons suck!
~Mavis
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Kim says
Perhaps use chicken wire instead of bird netting. Racoons have razor sharp claws
Mary Ann says
I’m so sorry. How heartbreaking it must be for you. 🙁
Krista says
I don’t know how close this is to you, but I thought about your chickens when I read it. http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/bear-rips-through-gig-harbor-fence-homeowner-looks/nQC5y/
I’m really sorry about your loss. I know how painful it can be to lose a pet….they weren’t “just chickens” to you guys. (((hugs))) I hope you find some new ones that are equally as sweet.
Mavis says
We’ve actually had a mamma bear and her cubs in our neighborhood before. They went through the Hillbillys trash. Scary stuff!
Susan says
That is so sad 🙁 Sorry for your loss. We have 2 of them that cross our backyard early in the morning, and I don’t like it!
There was just an article today on the front page of the Life section in The Columbian, and they can be nasty critters.
Snarling, scavenging , love gardens , compost bins, petdoors, fruit orchards ,
and hollow areas – weigh up to 40 lb! and worst of all- “Washington raccoons often carry roundworms,raccoon roundworms can cause serious or even fatal disease in humans” NEVER touch or inhale raccoon droppings.
“Normally you need a permit to trap an animal; but state law (WA) says you can trap or kill a raccoon on your own property if it is “damaging crops or domestic animals”. It is against the law to transport a trapped raccoon and realease it.
The article recommends checking the Fish and Wildlife site for extensive guidelines for keeping raccoons at bay.
Mavis says
Coons are creepy. No doubt about it.
JT says
Go for 2″ x 4″ galvanized wire “mesh” if you are not, this is what we have been using and what is recommended as a minimum on backyard chicken websites. Also could buy hardware cloth, more expensive but it works. Also make sure you bury some of it as raccoons will dig it up if they can.
LaurelB says
Sorry you have lost some of your flock.
When we built our coop (we have 4 cats and two of them have very strong hunting abilities for birds) so they are enclosed completely. Besides our cats, we have 3 dogs. Then there are the wild critters, raccoons, foxes, skunks and mountain lions. To keep anything from digging under we buried pavers and places additional pavers on top creating a foundation. Then the wire was stapled to 2×4’s and another 2×4 screwed to it to cover the staples. We also used smaller wire, that is very strong. There is a roof over the entire thing and half is just wire walls and the other half is their house. Next year we will expand to add more outside area but it will also be completely enclosed.
Heidi says
My heart is breaking for your family & your feathered friends. My chickens are free range but I do lock them into their coop at night. I’m contemplating building a full chicken run so I don’t need to worry about the wild critters. Best of luck critter proofing your chicken yard.
Amanda says
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150950646714920&set=a.10150918894069920.433776.225193959919&type=3&theater
maybe this will help?
You Can Call Me Jane says
I feel your pain, friend. I feel your pain.
Mavis says
It sucks doesn’t it. 🙁
Patrice says
Skunks and possums also hunt chickens. When I was a girl, skunks raided our henhouse. I’ll never forget how my dad shot a skunk one night. The odor lingered for a long time. (We lived out in the country)
Karl Katzke says
Mavis, I’m sorry for your loss. Have you considered putting out a safe trap and relocating the ‘coon?
You could probably barter that neighbor of yours for some leftover chicken nuggets from her freezer or something.
Mavis says
Personally, I’d rather own a coon cap. But now that you mention it, I wonder if Mr. Hillbilly has a coop trap. He has everything else. I’m going to ask. Thanks!
Lissa says
FWIW, it is EXTREMELY dangerous to handle raccoons. They carry fatal to humans roundworms and they are completely vicious. It is also illegal in WA to move/release raccoons for these reasons. Now, you can shoot them. Or otherwise kill them, but you can’t move them anywhere.
At every vet clinic I’ve ever worked, we will not let people in the door with raccoons due to the dangers to the staff. Even with the so-called safety of the trap, I wouldn’t risk it if I were you. Just work on proofing the coop more. Sorry that this happened!
Jenny says
Man, that sucks! Skip bird netting, it doesn’t slow down raccoons at all. Raccoons and foxes can also rip right through flimsy chicken wire. We use half-inch hardware cloth for our ducks; it’s too strong for the critters to claw or bite through. Their run is completely enclosed with it. Raccoons can also open a lot of different latches. There are raccoon-proof latches but we just use padlocks. We buried the wire cloth 10 inches deep around the perimeter of their house/run to keep out any digging pests.
Mavis says
Thanks for the suggestions Jenny.
Melissa says
I HATE Raccoons. Last year they were trying to get into our chimney by chewing the siding and when they learned we would tolerate that they switched to trying to get under the house by chewing up the cover that goes over that spot. Sorry about all the chickens. That sucks. :o( Could it have been a coyote?
Mavis says
Not likely. We’ve seen Ricky in our backyard before. Once night he came back 3 times around dusk and each time the girls would start clucking loudly so we would run out there.
Elizabeth says
If you are going to keep chickens they really need a completely enclosed safe area around the coop and it must have the 1/2″ hardware cloth….not chicken wire. I would really encourage you to do that before getting more….because it is kind of unfair to the birds if a known problem exists. Good luck with whatever you decide!
Mavis says
I’ve come to the conclusion that Ricky has to be climbing over the top of the fenced area to get in. It’s 5 feet high and well secured everywhere else but the top. I think I’m going to invest in some wire to cover the top of the chicken run.
Kate in NY says
Here on the east coast, we are having our own raccoon woes this summer. We have lost 6 beautiful girls altogether – and are now down to 3. 🙁 The absolutely crazy thing is that they got into our eglu by maneuvering out the tricky slide-in dropping tray, then grabbing the unsuspecting birds from underneath – and to do so, they also had to move three pretty big rocks out of the way first. We have freaking mensa raccoons or something. I feel like it’s already too late in the season to get any new chicks – plus, the system we previously thought was raccoon/fox proof is now looking decidedly not so. Not only did I really love those chickens and enjoy the fresh eggs they gave me – but man, there is so much WORK that goes into raising those chickens from day-old chicks. I am just so frustrated. I feel your pain.
Mavis says
When we had the smaller Eglu the coons moved the tray as well. I wish they would just go away. I can;t stand them.
AllisonH says
I am so sorry about your ladies! We had a skunk in trapped in our coop a few weeks ago…sleeping with my girls. Luckily we were able to let the girls out and use a live trap to relocate the skunk. Just FYI coons like marshmallows ( along with skunks and possums). Set the trap ( I would totally loan you ours but I live in the Portland area) and relocate the sucker! You should also close your ladies in there coop every night to keep them safe. Really sorry for your loss:(
Sammy says
Mavis,
I’m so sorry about your “girls” – I worry about something happening to our chickens all of the time. I hope the rest of your flock is left in peace!
Mavis says
Me too! 🙁
Gloria says
So sorry, Mavis. That’s just awful.
Karina says
Those pesky raccoons!! We have a Koi pond in our back yard. Last summer we lost all FIVE koi fish to the coons! (They were about 2 feet long too!) We only recovered 2 of the bodies… So some poor sorry neighbor of ours must have found the carnage in their yard. (we live in the city).
I hope your neighbors didn’t have to deal with any of the aftermath…
Also, have you tried putting a radio out? One suggestion we had (but didn’t have time to try before it was too late) was to put a radio on to a talking channel. I guess some predators get scared and think there are people around.
Another suggestion was an automatic motion sprinkler. I don’t know if the raccoons would not care or get scared.
Then again, maybe it’s time the HH and MB take some hunting lessons and go back to what they did in the pioneer days and take care of the rascals!
Mavis says
Ahh yes, maybe we will get lucky and have coon stew one of these days.
Helen in Meridian says
Didn’t Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies cook a fine coon stew? Did she put out a cookbook? Of course he didn’t get your pesky hen that the neighbors gave back. We had terrorist raccoons that ran the neighborhood at my Vancouver WA house. They would get on my roof, and my upstairs balcony after totally tearing up the neighbors pond, pond pump and ate their Koi.Terrorists, they think they own the neighborhood.
Mavis says
Of course the raccoon didn’t take Buff. Raccoons stink!
Susan says
Buff is a rebel! No way she’s going anywhere!! 🙂
Practical Parsimony says
I go round and round with a friend–he says just use chicken wire and thinks I am extravagant.
No, bird netting keeps birds out. Chicken wire keeps chickens in. Chicken wire does not keep predators out. Dogs, raccoons, all predators can get into chicken wire. Get 1/2 x1/2 hardware cloth to keep out a raccoon predator. I have 2×4 inch “hog wire” on top of the ground from 3′ on the outside to 1′ on the inside. A racoon or fox will dig at the fence. They don’t know to move back 3′ to dig. The 1′ on the inside is because the chickens were trying an escape–lol–just kidding. But, it seemed they were making it easier for a predator to dig under! The top is covered with the hardware cloth and there is a tarp over that. They have a 10’x10’x6′ high dog pen.
Even if you build a tight struture of wood, a raccoon can tear his way into a wooden structure, especially since they now know where the food is. Since the hens were gone, it may not be a raccoon.
Good luck.
I actually brought my three hens in to live at night in a crate by the back door for about 14 months until I could get the pen secure.
Desi says
So sorry Mavis! I know how the birds are part of your family, sorry for your loss! Darn those racoons.
Practical Parsimony says
Noise and lights to scare raccoons away works for raccoons not habituated to human activity.Raccoons that have been around humans just ignore lights and noise. That is what I have read, and I can tell you from experience it is true. Two baby roaccoons fell through my ceiling within inches of my arm as I watched tv. When the police, animal control, and the emt were here, the mama came up the steps and was headed into my house with all of us talking and the lights on. The emt was for me.
Plus, they only work if there is no food. Wild animals will risk the light and noise if the scent of food is present.
Make sure the hardware wire is Galvanized After Welding (GAW) not Galvanized Before Welding (GBW). Welding ruins the galvanizing and causes it to rust faster.
Christina Briggs says
We had the same issues with a mama fox this summer! We are a little crazy but we installed motion alarms that we activate by remote once they are all in bed for the night! It only took one time for the alarms to go off and she hasn’t been back! Maybe motion lights would work too and we also leave a small radio on all the time? Sorry it really stinks when they are your pets too! 🙁
Sara says
Another option is to put a hotwire just off the ground around the perimeter. We have horse fencing adjacent so we just come off that, but you can get inexpensive plug-in and solar chargers for that little bit of wire. We definitely have coons (trapped them several times to save the orchard harvest) but we’ve never had them attack the chickens in the pen. We also have coyotes and haven’t had a problem. We across the bridge from Tacoma and do have a trap if you’d like to borrow it.
Laura says
I agree using a live trap would be best if you can get your hands on one. Another option…buy a good hound dog. Do you have to train them to bay when a coon is in sight? Maybe reread Where The Red Fern Grows…seems like there’s lot of tips in there about dealing with/outsmarting the critters.
chris says
So sorry about all of this. Go to MyPetChicken.com. They have all the cool stuff. Chickers really need a hen house!! Good Luck!
Melissa says
So sorry for your loss … I hope the rest of your ladies will remain safe and that you find lovely replacements.
Mrs. Hillbilly says
Why yes , little hillbilly boy has a coon cap!
Anita Morton says
I’m really sorry to hear about your loss. I don’t have any chickens, but it must be heartbreaking to lose them. They looked so sweet. I hope you are able to come up with an arrangement to keep out the racoon.
lili says
Sorry for your loss. They will be truly missed.
Kristin says
I am right there with ya. We lost 3 8 week olds to coons a couple weeks ago. We put a live trap out there (wire dog kennel) and caught it at 4 am. Came out in the morning and it had dug a trench all the way around the kennel, bent the bars and somehow escaped out of the bottom. They are nasty!!
I talked to a retired man who keeps chickens (similar to your set up nd has for years) says the only way to keep them out is an electric fence. You can spool the wire along the top so when they climb up, they will get a surprise run away.
Practical Parsimony says
Raccoons like tuna and sardines, but when I use that, I catch neighbor cats. I use a strawberry since cats cannot smell them from a block away and don’t come to the trap. I laughed about the marshmallow. That would be something I would eat too many of if I bought those for bait…lol. Put a shiny ball of foil in the trap because raccoons love shiny things. They will actually go for a shiny ball of foil even without food in the trap. Good luck.
Raccoons don’t usually carry off hens. They kill them and rip the chest open and leave them lying there with their head intact. You may have several things after your hens.
Buy some predator pee…like big predator. Have husband pee aound the pen/house. Or, have him pee in a can and carry it out. I bought coyote attractant, thinking there would be no coyotes around here. I used it liberally. THEN, I was told coyotes were seen the night before in the street right near my house. Coyote attractant is pee. Can you put bags of cat litter around, and then you can remove it so the hens won’t eat it?
I caught eight raccoons after one hen was murdered!
Rhonda says
When we moved to Georgia from Pennsylvania years ago, we bought 7 acres. There was already an old coop in the back. We didn’t know anything about chickens at the time, but bought 5 Rhode Island reds. The chicken coop was on stilts made by 2 x 4s, so it was 4 or 5 feet up off the ground. It only had three sides, leaving the front wide open. The back had a hatch, that you lifted up to get the eggs out of the nests. The open front had a very narrow, (talking one inch, if that) slat from top to ground, with small verticle one inch slats every 2-3 inches. The hens had no problem climbing up, and the attackers could not climb up that narrow piece of wood! The only varmint we had a problem with was the neighbor’s dog, and after my boys shot him with a BB gun a few times, even he quit coming by!
Sarah says
We just lost all 7 chickens to 2 stray dogs! On top of that, those idiotic mutts tore through my cantaloupes and scattered them all over my neighbor’s pasture! We are going to get galvanized hog panels….NOTHING will get through that!
Sherlyn says
I don’t know if this will help but I would recommend that instead of chicken wire or bird netting go down to lowes and get kennel wire. It’s made to hold back dogs so it should keep out a raccoon. It has small squares about 2 inches by 2 inches so it should keep the birds in and anything out. I also saw a 10 percent off coupon for lowes on the web today. I think it was on wild for cvs? This is what we use on our chicken run because we live in the country and chicken wire wont cut it out here.
Melannie says
I feel your pain.
I should currently have 57 chickens but instead I only have 31. Over a period of 2 days my flock was decimated. Including my personal pet.
On Day 1 my DH had fed and watered them as I had an early meeting at work had noticed a few feathers but didn’t really notice much else. He’s all about “get it done” and sees no point to visiting with them.
Day 2 I discovered the survivors cowering in the corner and enough feathers to stuff a bed.
They had had dug a tunnel and been squeezing in through where 2 boards which had come loose. We had filled the hole and re-attached the boards. We also found a lot of chickens prints around the coop and down the hill, so I wonder if some of them were scared enough to try to escape but still met a grizzly end 🙁
We found no immediate evidence of bodies but I did find several feather piles in odd locations around the farm.
3rd night DH and I sat up most of the night discovered and eradicated 3 possums, a raccoon and a fox.
We stayed up the second night and found one more raccoon trying to get in. That was 7 weeks ago. Since then I anxiously counted them every morning but I am happy to report 5 Rhode Island Reds, 6 buff Orphingtons, 7 Jersey Giants & 13 Araucana’s are all accounted for.
Suffice to say I dug out trenches around the coop, laid in chicken wire and broken glass. As well as nailing every single board in too many times!!
Practical Parsimony says
Multiple predators accounts for some chickens left dead in the pen and others being carried off. Raccoons leave the dead hens. Good job on the eradication of those predators and reinforcing the pens. The raccoons that got mine climbed over the top of the dog pen. I hope you reinforced that, too.
Lizzy says
Hardware Cloth = piece of mind. There is a magazine out on news stands now about Chickens. I think Urban Farms puts it out. Describes how to tell which predator has invaded and how to stop/prevent any further attacks. So sorry to hear about your little peeps 🙁
Leola says
Hi Mavis,
I also feel your pain. We live in North Bend, WA in the woods. We have lost chickens to weasels, raco0ns, possums, coyotes, and last summer we lost 11 to a bobcat that tore the netting off the top. We also had a bear tear a hole in the double layer of wire and break in the eat the grain. Consequently we built a fortress for the hens and so far there have not been any problems. Check out our chicken fortress on my blog, for more info and photos.
Love your blog. Keep up the good work, you are inspiring lots of us.
Mavis says
Holy Cow, I cannot believe you were able to snap a photo of a bear in the the coop! Yikes!
Jenny says
I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve been looking into getting a few chickens, too. I get a lot of great info about chickens and pens and such from http://tbnranch.com/. Amy is a wealth of information and such a doll to talk to. Maybe you can find some cool tips on there to keep Rocky Raccoon from stealing your chicks again.
Mavis says
Thanks Jenny, I will take a look. 🙂
Crystal says
I lost my two cherished white crested polish roosters to a predator on Thanksgiving Morning. I have no idea what killed them but Jim was killed inside the coop and Artie was eaten outside of the coop with small pieces left laying as though the predator was full. There were two holes in the coop wire. The size of a 21 foot hole and then another 2 foot hole underneath that one. Anyone have a idea what could have done this. I live in a rural area yet not far from the city of Atlanta and on the bus line. There is plenty of light and noises all of the time. Anyone with ideas please respond. Thank you.