Raccoon troubles!

Well, the rotten raccoons are at it again, only this time, with pretty awful consequences. One evening, one of the baby chickens was accidentally left out (by me) and the next day, I found it all torn up in the chicken run. Ick, right?

But it gets worse, as the following morning, I was astounded to discover two dead chickens inside the big coop! We've never had trouble with this before, and we've had chickens for more than a year. Most of the other chickens were injured. It is my opinion that without the roosters, all of our chickens would have been killed.

Upon further inspection, it looked like the raccoons were climbing up the netting next to the coop, which is used to protect the baby chickens from chicken hawks, and climbing in through under the eaves, which were left open for ventilation. Mike thought they might have been tunneling in, so he blocked that, but when I pointed out where the bodies of the chickens were, he agreed to also block off that side of the coop, under the eves.

Poor man worked all day, and then in the dark was putting up the boards for blocking. Then, thankfully, he decided to wait up and see what was actually coming around, because the darned coons, when they found the one entrance blocked, went over to the next eave and somehow climbed into the coop without the netting to stand on! Mike chased them out, and put up temporary blocks which will be fixed today.

Thankfully, none of the chickens were killed or seem to be injured more. But all the poor things are shell shocked - standing around in a little clump. looking nervous. Thankfully they are not pecking each other, as chickens sometimes will do. I think it is probably because they are free-range chickens in the evenings, and they can go out during into the run during the day, and they aren't bored.

Well, let's hope that the new boards over the eaves stop the raccoons!