On December 11th in the still of the night, masked bandits made their way into my yard and opened the door to my chicken coop.
Unfortunately I was partly at fault. It was the night that i did not make sure the coop door had latched.
When I woke up in the morning I found that only one of my fifteen chickens and ducks were left alive. It was the sole rooster.
Raccoons massacred all but one of my birds overnight.
Raccoons are jerks. Let me tell you why; they did not eat most of the birds, in fact only one and a half were actually eaten. most of the rest were just killed, many of them with their heads severed.
I have already set a preliminary fence around the coop so that it will be harder for the raccoons to get to them and so that I can let my dog out to protect the birds. (i've successfully gotten our dog Nova to stop chasing chickens thanks to a dog whisperer episode) I will also be setting some humane traps for these bastards and will be sending them to the mountains.
Let this be a lesson, if there are critters in your yard call vector control services and also if you've got birds, keep them safe at night!
p.s. i would share pictures but it's pretty disturbing.
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4 comments:
aww, Andrew, this sucks. the same thing happened to a friend of mine but they had ducks. their headds were gone but the bodies were still there =/ they belonged to the 10-year-old in the house and the mom didn't have the heart to tell her they had been murdered.
Andrew,
Very sorry to hear about this! How frustrating!
Dude. I did not every think raccoons were chicken killers. YOu sure this was not a coyote? Or some kind of feral cat? I know raccoons eat fish but I have not heard of them eating chickens. More investigation may be needed.
definitely raccoons, I've seen them try to get in a few times and my pals over at Homegrown Evolution coincidentally blogged about the same issues just as I did
here
I dont think the coyote would have been able to get in since raccoons have thumbs and would have needed them in order to get into the coop. Raccoons are also known to bite off heads and leave the bodies, which definitely occurred.
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