I had a long chat with a neighbor the other day. He is the proud owner of some new chickens and a few geese. He's been trying to get a personal orchard started and recently built a little green house. I enjoyed talking with him.
One of the major point of our discussions was predation - especially by raccoons. It is fairly easy to keep raccoons out of the chickens, just bury the wire a little way under the ground and they stop digging.
Also, raccoons only dig right at the base of a vertical surface. I build a shallow moat of quick-crete around the perimeter of my chicken run and that stops the digging.
Other ideas can be found on the web, including barbed wire, electric wire, and something called a "floppy fence".
But the very next morning, I found that someone had been probing my defenses. Even though my run is fairly secure, there is one area that worries me (since the dogs pulled apart the cage). I still leave out my raccoon trap.
It continues to work.
2 comments:
I just saw another post about someone losing chickens to a badger, which reminded me of how my father used to lose chickens to raccoons. And now here's your post about the very same!
Can you legally transport raccoons or other trapped wildlife there?
The easiest thing for me to do with the raccoons is to call the local SPCA. They will come and "dispose" of raccoons that are harassing "pets".
They are pretty good about coming and getting it, though for a while I was getting three raccoons a week and knew all the officers by name.
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