And Then There Were Eight

It has been a sad week on the chicken front.

We bought 21 chickens a few weeks before Daniel was born.  We lost 4 chickens in the last year, 1 to unknown illness, 3 to a predator. So, 17 were left and were laying well and generally making us happy.

3 days ago, we found a dead chicken in the yard, partially eaten.  So, predator!  Kevin strengthened the fencing.

2 days ago, Naomi went out to feed the chickens and found EIGHT dead chickens in our yard.  Obviously, the predator was totally unimpressed with the reinforced fencing.

EIGHT!  Well, NINE, since we lost one the day before.  Nine of our beautiful chickens wiped out in 2 short days.  The sadness, the sadness!  And we were pretty mad too.  It is one thing when a predator kills to eat, but this predator just KILLED.  Well, 3 were partially eaten, but apparently it was killing just for the sheer pleasure of killing.  Or, as Naomi said, maybe it hoped to come back and eat the dead ones later?  That is a possibility.

Of course, the predator was just acting naturally, but it was still distressing and upsetting.

Kevin has a friend at work with a humane trap, and he lent it to us.  Kevin suspected a raccoon, and this friend said raccoons love fried chicken.

So the trap was baited with fried chicken bones and sure enough, yesterday morning we had caught...a raccoon!  Not a skunk.  Thank you, Lord. A skunk would have been...complicated.

So we were happy. Predator gone.  (And for those who are wondering, we shot the raccoon.  It is officially a nuisance animal and we weren't going to relocate it so it could attack someone else's chickens.)

Several people suggested we rebait the trap last night in case there was another one.  That seemed unlikely to me but, why not?

I wandered outside this morning and saw...

another raccoon!  Ok, that was good advice. The Great Chicken Slaughter makes more sense now.  There were at LEAST 2 involved.  We'll bait it again tonight, probably.

So we're gradually making the world safer for our chickens. And yes, the raccoon is cute, and yes, it is a little sad that it has to die, but we are killing this one too.  We're going to protect our sweet, innocent, stupid chickens.