predators

I live in the Fort Pierce area in Florida and purchased 8 bantam chicks and I placed them in a box with their adoptive mother in my loft. All was going well. She was taking very good care of them. However this morning when I checked on them I found three dead chicks and fire ants crawling all...

Hello. We have had 12 chickens (now 11) for about 5 months. They are free range birds and we have a very secure coop that they sleep in. We are new to chickens and we lost our first hen two days ago. We were heart broken. We were not around so we didn't see how it happened or what predator...

It seems like a daily complaint but folks, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, panthers, bears, eagles, hawks, and coons have been eating chickens since they got off the ark. This list is not exhaustive either, I just listed the ones I deal with on a regular basis. Raising hens and broilers in the dark...

Hi everybody first time chicken owner and poster. I come to these helpful forums today because my chickens are exhibiting some odd behavior (odd even by chicken standards lol). I've raised six baby chicks that hatched in May so they are roughly 3 months old. They've been living outside since the...

I let my chickens free range during the day and lock them up at night. A few months ago my Buff Orpington, Buffy was killed by a fox. As I was counting my chickens before locking them up that evening I noticed she was missing and when I went looking for her, I followed the trail of feathers and...

Hello, I recently joined the forum. I have been raising chickens in Michigan for about 6 years. When we first built our coop and run, we tried to secure it as much as possible, and we have never had a problem with predators in the coop before. We live on 10 acres in the woods, so predators...

A little while ago I posted a thread about how there was a couple fox cubs growing up across our road and now our neighbours are chasing them out of their yards but they said that they look like baby coyotes. So I'm afraid that our yard might be the next stop for these little guys so is there...

Woke up this morning. Ducks are no where to be found. Find 2 separate areas in our pumpkin patch that had some feathers and a few "insides". Other than that there is no trace of them. We have cameras outside and was able to play back and heard the whole things around 12:44am. Lots of noise from...

Hi! I want to be sure NO predators can get into my coop because I love my hens TOO MUCH!!!! The run is completely enclosed in hardware cloth and it's very spacious and tall with a clear roof. The coop itself is raised with two doors on either side than can be opened and closed. They are secured...

About a month ago, before I knew about this website, I lost 13 bantam chickens/chicks and 7 brand new, just from the brooder, Silver Penciled Wyandotte's. I was devastated because I love my chickens and I hate losing them. there was only one time that I found a chick laying dead in run and it...

Hello, I'm doing my research with plans to buy 3-4 bantam Cochin hens. I only have a small area for the coop (3 feet wide and 8 feet long) but I do plan to let them roam the yard with supervision. We live in the suburbs of LA but open space and mountains are in the back with every predator you...

Hello, been lurking a little. Decided I'll join and see what I can learn from experienced chicken owners. I have not gotten my chicks yet, decided to start with chicks even though my teenaged boys wanted eggs, just too much to start. We live at 7,500 feet on a mountain mesa! We have lots of...

I hope my creepy title caught your attention. Back story: Since I am not a millionaire i didn't feel like buying hundreds of feet of chain link wire to build my pheasant, chicken and turkey enclosures. I used poultry wire which is real good for keeping poultry in.... while predators kill...

I am having trouble building our run. We tried pvc but it is too wide and the pvc sagged. We then added 2x4 supports but there was still some sagging. We tried tying the sagging parts to trees but I was not confident in its ability to hold snow, predators, etc. There are trees that I could wrap...

Hi, I'm new here and new to the art of chicken keeping.First off, I have no idea which category to post this in, so sorry about that. I'll soon be getting 4-8 hens and potentially a rooster, at this time I am leaning towards getting hybrids. I would also like to get a peahen to at least...

Hello! I'm very new to chickens (we have four 2-week old chicks all doing wonderfully so far), and I'm trying to learn all I can. We live on the edge of a very small town in rural WI. There are farm fields behind our house, and woods & lakes beyond the fields. We'd love to let our girls...

I have had chickens previously but after having some nasty problems with predators (mainly raccoons, but some fox problems as well) I was without chickens for a couple years, I just bought some chicks on Monday and I'm excited to start fresh and hopefully have a much better experience this time...

The other night I heard coyotes howling really close by, :eek:so I searched high and low looking for a radio to no avail, to hopefully keep the coys at bay. Finally I remembered we have two old cell phones, so I charged them up, set one on YouTube in the nesting box that's blocked off, and one...

New-ish to chickens. I helped my friend build a new pre-fab coop today. We set it on pavers to keep it off the ground. We have 1/2" hardware cloth to add an apron, but storms kept us from adding it today. Thoughts on stapling hw cloth to 1x4s and framing around the bottom? Leaving coop...