Sunday, August 27, 2006

chicken massacre

two more of our broiler chickens were eaten last night. to my best understanding the raccoons reach through the chicken wire and pull the chicks toward them and bite their neck biting part of the wire in the process. i bought 3/8 inch wire cloth and wrapped the entire perimeter of the chicken tractor. they wont be able to reach through anymore. the wire cloth is much stiffer and i left the pointy edge facing down attempting to prevent any attempts at reaching under. i also borrowed mikes live trap and will bait it this evening. hopefully i won't catch our cat. she won't come in the house anymore. she is a fully integrated farm-cat.

on a lighter note here are pictures of the kids.
my princess modeling her sunny glasses

my boy doing his best calvin klein ad pose.

1 comment:

Ed said...

Never knew that racoons would eat chicks but I checked the extension office website in my area and it says they even eat rabbits so I'm guessing it must be true. I still don't know how a racoon can catch a rabbit.

Racoons seem to be in abundance. My parents set two live traps every night in their sweetcorn patch and always have two coons waiting for them come morning. Occasionally one of the farm cats but after being caught a couple times each, they tend to shy away now. Last year, my parents removed over forty coons from the patch, spray painted a red spot on their backs and released them. None ever came back but they still caught two every night.

This year, they are up in the thirties now in captures and their sweetcorn patch was still decimated. I think next year, they are going to have to get another dog (theirs died a couple years ago) or electrically inforce the patch perimeter.

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