Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints The great chicken Massacree of 2013

My chicken collection had been reduced to three over the last couple of months and thursday night these were all killed by some sort of varmint. They are kept inside a 20x20 fenced in enclosure of 4 foot high fencing, the kind with the 2x4 inch vertical squares and a good gate made of cattle pannel. The coop itself is an 8x8x8 inclosure made of chicken wire and 2x4's that I usually leave the door open on. I have been suffering from the flue but still set some steel traps. Old rusty worn out traps. Friday morning I had the reason I had not been getting any eggs for a couple of weeks, a skunk. He was executed with a shotgun. Nothing saturday night though something got in the coop and set off one of the traps, chewed a bit on what was left of Goldie (my ex rooster). Last night though was different. I got up this morning to find a note on my keyboard there was a dog in one of my traps. Sure enough there was a wild Cur type dog in the trap set next to Goldie. She was a very scrawny brown dog, 5-6 years old and very unhappy to see me though she had been barking and whining for a while. I said sorry about your luck and she growled showing me some rather impressive dental work. I put a 22 bullet into her head and she was done. The other trap, a #2 Victor had been sprung but nothing was in it. This trap is so worn out you could hardly call it a trap other than it's looks. I have used it for more than 30 years in Wyoming, Colorado and Texas. It may have just gone off as it was still sitting where I set it. The dog weighed about 40 pounds, would surely have weighed around 50 had she been in good shape. No collar, many scars. I wondered about how many of my chickens she had killed in the last 3 years, I have lost over 40. I am going to keep the traps set for a week or so before buying more chickens as the sign showed there were at least three dogs in on the massacree.

Don't discount the coons. And they are sneaky enough to trip traps and leave with the chickens in the still of the night.

And that's a fact.

chickens attract every varmit in the country, like crap draws flies, might get a handful of snares and hang them around ive had better luck with snares than footholds. good luck. rio7

I set up one of my hog traps as a dog trap. Caught one yesterday, fed him and let him go, Merry Christmas! He was just to well cared for to go to the trouble of killing chickens.

He'll be back!!!!!

x2.

When I was a kid, we lived on a farm and we raised chickens each year for my mother's family to slaughter. A couple of weeks before the butchering, we went fishing one Sunday afternoon. We came home to see 72 of about 75 chickens dead and scattered about the barnyard.

A canine had dug into the perm/coop. Old Sparky was helping us investigate but showed no great interest in any of the carcasses. Dad couldn't decipher any unexplained tracks.

To be on the safe side, Dad ordered Sparky to be tied up. The three survivors were re-penned and the fence repaired. Replacement chicks were ordered.

A couple of weeks later, Dad was up on the old barn, taking it apart. He heard the 3 surviving chickens raising a ruckus. He looked over the roof and saw old Sparky (who Dad had finally taken pity on and released) furiously digging to get into the chicken pen/coop.

Dad decided that old Sparky may have been solely responsible for our chicken massacre. Sparky got the "one way walk".

Never lost a chicken again to chickencide.

I regaled you with this story because old Sparky was well fed. There was absolutely no physical reason why he killed those chickens. Not one bit of meat was eaten. Each bird was bitten in the head/neck area.

I think he did it for sport.

I'm inclined to believe it was coons, or perhaps weasels or mink, they're all death on chickens, or were, on Dad's Missouri farm (I don't know if you have mink or weasels in Texas).

Dad was a trapper in "waybackwhen" days, and he set traps, took extraordinary measures, etc. to keep the coons out of the chickenhouse, to include wrapping the corners of the building in tin, so they couldn't shinny up to the windows at the top of the building.. Between him and the dogs, they finally got the chicken-stealing stopped.
Don't overlook the lazyazz possum, either. I caught and killed a possum that was trying to get into the chicken house WHILE WE WERE STANDING THERE, loading ground corn into the feeders. Strangely, I didn't have a gun handy, so I drove a T-shaped steel fencepost clean thru it, pinning it to the ground.

There were three chickens that were mostly eaten. The upper back on the rooster and a torn piece of leg from one of the hens. I'm tempted to just do the commercial thing and keep the chickens in the hen house all the time. I would rather further confine my chickens than go on a crusade killing my neighbors kids dogs.

I lost a bunch of chickens last summer, fortunately after my state allowed taking furbearers outside of season if they are nuisance. I have a similar situation with pets all over the place so I can't just run unlimited 220 conibears in bucket sets and concrete block sets all over the place. I ended up doing two things: 1. Put out coon cuffs and have-a-heart traps to minimize dog and cat catches 2. set up a borrowed baby monitor near the coop for a few nights, with the receiver near my bed.
Nothing will wake you up faster than the sound of dozens of chickens going nuts over a baby monitor speaker turned up to full volume. It's the best alarm clock ever. That plus a trusty rifle/handgun with red dot sight, a mounted flashlight, and a willingness to run outside in boots and skivvies makes for a decent rapid response for those coons that have become trap wary.

Fox can deplete a hen house fast, and much harder to trap than most cridders

I would want to know what critters were visiting and would setup a trail camera.

Put a trail camera on the entrance to the coup to see what's doing the deed