Meat Chicken Project Update

We've recently lost 4 meat chickens to a predator that has a taste for legs and guts.

It started with a single bird vanishing.

The next night two birds were killed by reaching under the coop and pulling out legs.

After we beefed up our defenses with heavy logs and rocks bordering the base of the coop, the predation persisted last night with a weaker spot identified and worked over and over until another bird was killed and half-eaten.

That's probably $30 worth of chicken dinners, market value, that some predator has gobbled up. On top of the 6 we lost earlier due to disease/weakness of the breed, we are down to 16. We are probably 10 days from harvest and we're wondering how many we can hang on to. We didn't raise these birds for 'coons or 'possums or coyotes. We raised them for us.

This project has not been our most successful, though we have already learned a lot.

We won't horrify you with pictures, though we have them for the record. If you are seriously interested in keeping chickens and want to know what you might wake up to find if your coop is not predator-proof, email me.