Tragedy in the Coop

Things were going well with our chickens.  I had just mentioned to Joe how lucky we were that we hadn't had any real problems or sick chickens.

Then, suddenly, we lost a chicken.  

And the next day, we lost another.  

When I say "lost", I don't mean it ran away.  Jack went to the coop, and it had died.  Two in a row.

I went out to the coop to investigate, and noticed the waterer was clogged.  Jack said it had likely been days since they had any water, and he felt terrible.  We assumed they died from lack of water, chocked it up to a valuable and sad learning experience, and moved on.  Or so we thought.  

They had also stopped laying eggs, which was odd.  I kept checking on them for signs of sickness, and I couldn't find anything.  

And then, the next day, I went to the coop and knew something was wrong from halfway across the yard.  There were feathers absolutely everywhere.  

Oh NO.  

And four more dead chickens.  I knew then that we were dealing with some sort of predator.  I was so pissed off,  Joe and I worked so hard to predator proof the coop, and we had clearly failed somewhere.  I walked around outside and found this, and knew immediately what was happening.

We have 18 inches of buried galvanized hardware cloth buried 18 inches deep around the coop.  For the type of predators we have here, it's plenty.  Now, when we built the coop, there was a tree stump on this corner.  There are four inches at this corner that were unprotected with the buried hardware cloth, because the tree stump was in the way.  However, the predator has apparently been working at that tree stump for quite some time, because it's almost completely GONE.  

And how sad is this picture, do you see the feathers?  I feel so terrible, my job was to protect them and I can't even fathom how scared they were, getting picked off one by one, night after night by a damn serial killer animal.

I dug the hole out the best I could so Joe could add the wire to it to fix it.  The predator ate most of the stump, but Joe would still have to use the axe to get the rest out.  I filled the hole with very heavy rocks, and went to pick up the boys from school.  

Joe got home from work right after dark, and went straight to the coop.  And he came straight back, hollering for his gun because the damn predator was back, and inside the coop.  

Me:  "WOAH!  No, you can't shoot it!  We live in the city limits!" 

All right.  So, we have several rifles/pistols, etc.  BUT, that doesn't do you a bit of good when you live in the city limits and it's against the law to discharge a firearm.  Could we have shot it and then told the police the animal was endangering our livestock?  Sure, probably so.  But I didn't think it was worth the effort, nor did I want Joe to blow the entire back of the chicken run off.  Because the coop and run are connected but separate, I locked the chickens up in the coop so it couldn't get in, and we left.  I couldn't believe the raccoon had moved all those heavy rocks out of the hole.  Big jerk.  

We set up four traps in the yard, and waited.  It didn't take long.  Less than 24 hours later he was back, and trapped.  

 Oh, and look.  He brought a couple friends.  It was a productive evening.  

We had borrowed an air rifle from a friend so we were able to take care of the problem ourselves.  It is illegal to relocate these animals here, so they had to go.  And no, I felt not one drop of remorse after one or more of these animals ate half of my flock.  And, we have since purchased our own air rifle so that in the future we can handle the problem ourselves.  

A lot of lessons learned here.  A sad time for the boys, and the girls left still haven't started laying eggs again.  They were definitely traumatized by the experience.  Not going to lie, I was too.  Mostly guilt for not having been able to protect them.  Hopefully we have fixed the problem and this won't happen again.