The worst predator I have encountered while keeping chickens, is the cute little raccoon.
I do know people have problems with them getting into garbage and causing other problems around their homes.
I consider a raccoon the “worst” but in areas other than New England, there are probably worse things, I just haven’t encountered them
A raccoon in a chicken house is much like a woodchuck or groundhog in a garden. If you have a row of nice squash, the woodchuck isn’t happy with one. They feel the need to go down the row tasting each one and effectively ruining your harvest if you have a small garden.
A raccoon will do the same thing if they are able to invade your coop.
My first encounter with this was somewhere close to my 4th or 5th year of having chickens. It happened sometime after 3 in the morning and it was in the spring of the year, I don’t know the exact date but there was still patches of snow on the ground.
I was awoken by the chickens making a really large amount of noise. After you have chickens for a while, it is quite easy to tell if the squawking is celebrating laying and egg, or danger to the flock. In this particular instance, there were several indicators that there was a problem.
For one thing, and the most important is the fact that chickens do not make much if any noise at night. Sometimes the rooster will crow or something, but there is never any substantial noise in the chicken house.
Knowing this, I got out of bed, slipped on a pair of jeans, grabbed my shotgun which I keep handy for things like this and ventured out into the cold in my jeans and shoes. The temperature was in the high 20′s so I really wasn’t happy but knew I needed to protect my flock.
I entered the chicken house or coop to find a couple dead chickens on the floor, 3 more on the roost, and one under the roost doing what I call “groaning” in pain. As I mentioned, the different sounds are quite distinguishable after having chickens even for a short time.
I didn’t immediately see the problem but in in what was only a few seconds I saw the raccoon by the window. He had climbed up the wall, I suppose he thought he could exit through the window. Not wanting to harm the creature, even though I was totally upset, I walked back to the house, went inside, got a jacket and hurried back to the door to watch the chicken house.
There was a small moon, or a small amount of light from the moon, I don’t remember the stage of the moon but I remember it wasn’t “full”. I waited for about 5 or 10 minutes which seemed like forever but saw no movement nor did I hear any more noise, other than the chicken moaning in agony under the roost.
After this short period of time, I entered the chicken house to find that the raccoon had not moved. I did take a few seconds to think about possible damage to the chicken house or breaking a window, but it wasn’t long, and I just cocked the shotgun, took aim and this raccoon became a non-problem.
I keep chickens for eggs and although I might eat one at anytime, I generally let them go until they die of old age, or a predator gets them.
In this case the hen was so severely injured didn’t really look to be in a condition that I could be sure she wouldn’t recover so I gently put her on the nest, picked up the dead raccoon, secured the chicken house as best I could in the dark and went back to bed.
In the cold and dark I hadn’t been able to quickly see how the raccoon got into the coop. I went out the next day and found that a couple staples in the corner of the screen door had been pulled out. This was just enough for the raccoon to squeeze into the coop. I didn’t notice it with the flashlight because the screen, or actually chicken wire hadn’t taken a permanent bend when the raccoon entered, so it didn’t stand right out that this was the point of entry.
I also felt that I had eliminated the problem, so I saw no reason to keep looking around in the cold. The next day, which is when I actually found the damage, I put a small slat of pine over the edges of the home made door and made it very secure.
It is good to remember that a raccoon really can get through a hole that seems much too small. They kill for the sake of killing in that they nearly always kill several, even if they just carry one off to eat or feed their young.
I have heard many people say that when they had a half dozen chickens, a raccoon wiped the whole flock out in one attack.
The fact that raccoons are in almost all rural, even suburban areas, means that it is always necessary to keep a coop very secure at night. They run when they see a human, but they don’t have a real strong natural fear of humans and are accustomed to being in areas where humans are present. Many predators have more fear and keep their distance much of the time.
This is what makes raccoons so dangerous concerning chickens. It was good that I killed the raccoon although I know P.E. T. A. would say to trap and move it. If I had not destroyed the raccoon, I am almost positive it would have returned. It might find a trap before trying to get back in and killing more chickens. I don’t like to gamble with my livestock. I feel that things like that just have to be done.
The chicken didn’t make it. I know I should have helped her out of this world because she must have suffered a while. I never feel good about harming anything but when it is a situation of this nature, it just isn’t worth it to let a raccoon go, just in case it takes another shot at killing the chickens.