Hey, Will Raccoons Eat My Chickens?

[McChooky]

I agree with you 1000%! They are VERY destructive. They WILL kill your poultry. They will keep trying to get to the poultry until they succeed. In the morning you will open your coop and instead of seeing your beautiful birds you will be looking at the Raccoons "killing field"....
They are also destructive to other buildings on your property. This is what a 100'x70' foot barn looks like after a Raccoon family chew through wire installation when they they are making themselves a comfortable new home.View attachment 4094151
We were lucky, none of our livestock were in the barn. Not only did we loose the barn, we lost two hay balers, hay mowers, a 4 y/o Truckcamper, 90hp and 130hp tractors. It took over 3 months to inventory all the lost equipment. The insurance companie only paid for the barn, they stated we didn't have the equipment listed when we took out the policy. View attachment 4094162

OMG I'm so sorry!

 

[DemeterAD9]

Completely securing a sizable chicken coop/run so no predator can get in tends to cost a substantial amount of money, far more than just a generic chicken coop and run would. Some people simply cannot afford (or even do the physical labor) to put in all those reinforcements to ward off predators and pests. Calling pest control when their rates are IMO ridiculous is also out of the question. So the "easy way out" by putting a bullet in a coon's head is more practical for many people in the long run.

I know everyone has their own feelings and opinions about killing things. Some feel strongly about killing wild life and I used to be the same way but at some point I became a stone cold killer, or more specifically a hunter/trapper/fisher/farmer who values knowing where my food comes from. If killing 20 coons is what keeps my feathered friends and protein providers safe then that's what I'll do. Heck I've even eaten a few of the critters and fed the left overs to the chickens. Chances are the wild bird and rabbit populations only benefited from the reduced nest raiders too. There is no shortage of vermin; raccoons, skunks, opposums, weasels, mink etc will never be in short supply in the US and they will never stop being the opportunistic predators they are. I'm on the side of population control, no critter sticks around long enough to figure out a way into the coop.

 

[Joecool]

Some good advice there,I want to add that they do not always kill the chicken to eat them. They also kill them because they see them as food competition. I trapped many of them and pretty soon I had to name them. I would paint an orange or pink stripe on their back when I would give them a ride out in the country.They would make it back to the trap in three days. I stopped when 18 or 19 miles was not enough they would still find home. In iowa we have them all, Deer eating sweet corn,Rabbits eating strawberries,ya can't kill em all.

 

[McChooky]

Everything eats chickens.Cats, birds, rats, snakes, squirrels and chipmunks all eat baby chicks .You can't turn them out or you'll risk losing them to Skunks, mink, possums, coons, hawks, vultures, crows, foxes, coyotes and bob cats .Aerial predators like owls,hawks and eagles also kill chickens. The biggest single threat to chickens are dogs so if you're new to raising chickens be especially careful if you have neighbors who let their dogs loose a lot.They have an natural born instinct to kill and will kill them until trained to do otherwise.

 

[Bawkbok]

I haven't seen much about opossums in this thread since the focus is on the coons, however, just for awareness, I had a vet tell me that if a dog tries to attack an opossum, because they can jump so high from a standing position, that if it jumps up while a dog is over the top of it, as in trying to attack it's head or neck, it could rupture the dogs heart due to the velocity at which they jump - instant death for the dog.

We had an opossum issue in our yard and our dog was chasing it nightly over a period of weeks. It finally got tired of being chased and harassed so it left, thankfully. If you have dogs out at night and a problem with opossums, be aware of this issue. Good luck trying to call your dog off during a chase. We couldn't do it.