- Jun 26, 2010
- 30
- 10
- 104
Hi all -
This morning I went to move our girls' feed under a roof since there's rain coming today, and sadly discovered that our NH red was dead and mostly eaten, our leghorn totally missing, and our black girl (not sure her breed) alive, but missing a few feathers on her back, and seemed dazed and confused, in addition to not being very excited about the scratch I threw down for her.
FWIW, we live in the southern California suburbs, and in 15+ years of keeping chickens, we have never had a predator problem. In fact, I encourage the neighbors' cat to come into the run and hunt rodents. (We don't do chicks, only pullets and larger.) Once, I found him snoozing in the nest boxes
I did see a coyote in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, so I suspect they or their kin would seem to be the likely culprit. We're too far away from wild areas to worry about cougars or bears or anything. There's a short run of ~6' block wall fence that the predator likely jumped to get into the run, and the 3 girls had made a habit of sleeping on the apex of the roof of the coop, so they'd likely have been pretty visible and exposed. Coyotes could certainly make the jump, I understand. They could have also hopped on top of our trash cans first and traveled along the wall to the run opening too.
The only other animals I really see around our area are raccoons, skunks, hawks, etc. Doubt it was a hawk since it was at night, or maybe early evening, and I've never seen one around here that I felt was big enough to take a chicken anyway. I doubt a raccoon could have done this much damage.
Anyway, I've never felt the need to secure the run 100%. Until now. I suppose I'll have to, though. I'd like to leave an opening big enough for the cat to get in and keep the run free of rodents, but keep anything bigger out. Given the geometry of our situation, I'm considering an automatic door to close off the more open area of the run, as I'd prefer not to have a bunch of wire fencing visible from the front of the house (and rather not attach anything to our neighbor's garage, which would also be necessary.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. Any recs for a decent automatic coop door? I can pipe out electricity if necessary. Probably better and more reliable than running it on solar with a battery. Possible to get a door that's big enough for chickens but too small for coyotes? I imagine those fellers can squeeze down pretty small if they want to...
Thanks
This morning I went to move our girls' feed under a roof since there's rain coming today, and sadly discovered that our NH red was dead and mostly eaten, our leghorn totally missing, and our black girl (not sure her breed) alive, but missing a few feathers on her back, and seemed dazed and confused, in addition to not being very excited about the scratch I threw down for her.
FWIW, we live in the southern California suburbs, and in 15+ years of keeping chickens, we have never had a predator problem. In fact, I encourage the neighbors' cat to come into the run and hunt rodents. (We don't do chicks, only pullets and larger.) Once, I found him snoozing in the nest boxes
I did see a coyote in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, so I suspect they or their kin would seem to be the likely culprit. We're too far away from wild areas to worry about cougars or bears or anything. There's a short run of ~6' block wall fence that the predator likely jumped to get into the run, and the 3 girls had made a habit of sleeping on the apex of the roof of the coop, so they'd likely have been pretty visible and exposed. Coyotes could certainly make the jump, I understand. They could have also hopped on top of our trash cans first and traveled along the wall to the run opening too.
The only other animals I really see around our area are raccoons, skunks, hawks, etc. Doubt it was a hawk since it was at night, or maybe early evening, and I've never seen one around here that I felt was big enough to take a chicken anyway. I doubt a raccoon could have done this much damage.
Anyway, I've never felt the need to secure the run 100%. Until now. I suppose I'll have to, though. I'd like to leave an opening big enough for the cat to get in and keep the run free of rodents, but keep anything bigger out. Given the geometry of our situation, I'm considering an automatic door to close off the more open area of the run, as I'd prefer not to have a bunch of wire fencing visible from the front of the house (and rather not attach anything to our neighbor's garage, which would also be necessary.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. Any recs for a decent automatic coop door? I can pipe out electricity if necessary. Probably better and more reliable than running it on solar with a battery. Possible to get a door that's big enough for chickens but too small for coyotes? I imagine those fellers can squeeze down pretty small if they want to...
Thanks
)
) I've never seen ferrets or weasels though. Not sure if they live in southern California or not! And we're too far from woodland areas for any larger predators like cougars or bears. And it was just last week I saw a coyote wandering around our neighborhood. 
