Heart broken and fowl-less

It is with a very heavy heart I must admit defeat...I lost my entire flock of chickens last weekend. I had gone out to Seattle the night before for a fun night celebrating my friend's bachelorette party and the next morning when I got home I took one look outside towards the coop and my stomach dropped. I don't want to get into and gorey details, but I could see little lumps scattered around the coop from my back porch with feathers everywhere! My parents came over to help me clean up and my dad and I searched high and low to figure out how the monster got in again. There was no way! Nothing was opened, pulled up, loose...looking at how the bodies/feathers were it looks as though the racoon had attacked them from outside of the coop on the wire fencing side. I still don't understand how my chickens could have been so dumb as to not just walk to the other, protected, side of the coop. It's like they walked up to the fence when the racoon came by and said "pick me!".

While we were still out cleaning up the horrific mess, in the tree above us just on the other side of the fence we saw a racoon! We must have JUST missed the attack, which makes me feel even worse that I could have been so close to saving them. I failed my pets by not being there to protect them.



Aftermath



Monster watching us clean up





















Yesterday we set up some live traps in hopes to catch those chicken killing coons. This morning when I checked the traps low and behold one had an opossum in it!! Not quite the vermin I was hoping for, but those little suckers are mean and scary too. They are also a threat, but I dont think as bad as the coons. We will have to relocate him before putting that trap back to work.

I'm still undecided whether or not I will try again. After all this I don't think I could handle another disaster. I miss them not only as a project I was trying so I could get fresh eggs, but also because they were my pets! Raising them from just a couple days old I grew quite attached. The coop is still up and sometimes I catch myself putting aside veggies to give to them, forgetting that they will just rot if I toss food into the empty coop! After a while I might think about trying again, after I make a coop of steel...