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None here, but neighbors do. I would but I rent, and the LL won't have it.
On the other hand there is a flock of wild turkey I see often, but don't hunt, and there is partridge year round. In legal season I hunt them, and would in shtf, anytime i wanted.
There a problem hunting then, which is the sound, and the expence of a few rnds. I do reload, but that still is time spent and materials used.
I also have black powder smoothbores, but still that is time and expence too. My LL has never known real hunger, so he can't understand shtf.
Maybe if you offered 1 dozen eggs with you monthly rent the LL would reconsider? People just don't know how good fresh/organic eggs taste compared to grocery store bought nor do they know what real chicken tastes like.
MO gal. I am working on that idea. There was no garden here, not even any soil, just hard pan sand. I made by composting every bit of real decent garden soil to cover apx 60 x 100 feet. This is the first year there was enough soil to cover the whole area. Also this year was a good growing season, which helped a lot. Last year was horrible bad with way too much rain.
This fall's big improvement will be moving all the strawberry plants after the first killing frosts, to another location, as 6 rows 25 feet long by 4 feet wide are just taking up too much room in the 60 x 100 area I can water. Most of the soil they are in will have to go with them, so I am composting now and have been all summer, and will all winter.
Maybe in spring I can start with fowel. They would be free ranging, but cooped in night. The LL thinks they will make noise, but shooting is ok, and he thinks they will smell, but only the coop might. Some people are just funny........ My LL owns guns but has one here, which i find real odd. I have that one myself for a repair, and I can't get him to buy the part, which isn't much money. Main spring for a colt Black Army a real one!!!!! His other guns are somewhere in Maine with some one he knows. I have begged for him to go get them, offering to drive and do anything he wants/needs to giterdun, but no...
He refuses barn cats too, and we need several as the mice are at moving in again. He worries his dogs may kill cats, but I doubt that. What I need is a real big tough barn cat, that will live in the barn 100%, but make it look like it just came here to live on it's own.
Everything else is here not to build a chicken shed and a nice looking one at that. Other than feed, heated water workin's everything here is perfect, but not yet.
last year i could, then I couldn't build a sugar shack. No reason given. I have the materials for that and cleared a brush lot too. I might build a generator shack this fall and drag it over to that area come sugarin' time. He don't like his gennie wet and it gets used in storms.
He sure like strawberries well enough and was pickin at the last batch of the season today. We have apx 20 pounds put up for winter too, so he knows we make lots of great food, and we all know where it came from too.
Number two son has just got some chickens. He is having some trouble with predatory birds. An owl was going at them the other day in the yard. Swooping and chasing them around until number two son broke it up. Also, a raccoon got two of them in the daytime. We know how to deal with the raccoon, but what about the owl and there is also a hawk that circles often?
i tried to raise chickens so many time, each time lose them all to the raccoons. can you tell me how to deal with them, i never see them during the day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilson1010
Number two son has just got some chickens. He is having some trouble with predatory birds. An owl was going at them the other day in the yard. Swooping and chasing them around until number two son broke it up. Also, a raccoon got two of them in the daytime. We know how to deal with the raccoon, but what about the owl and there is also a hawk that circles often?
i tried to raise chickens so many time, each time lose them all to the raccoons. can you tell me how to deal with them, i never see them during the day.
Raccoons are pretty territorial, so if you trap them and ditch them somewhere you can eliminate them for a season until the territory fills in. I use a 10x12 Havahart trap but it is not really big enough for a well matured coon. I get them eventually but their butt sticks out the back and it won't close them in. a 15x15 ($80 Amazon) is the easiest because it will get them on the first try. In most areas you have to get about 5 of them and that will do for a season. Right now is a great time because they already have chosen their winter home and won't be looking.
Legend says if you don't kill them (I've lost the stomach to kill these critters), you gotta take them across the water or they come right back. That means a river or a stream. Probably is just a myth, but for sure if you take them a few blocks away they will be back.
I tie a fried chicken leg on the trigger with tie wire (after eating the meat myself). I can get one every night and just keep it up until I am only getting possums or the neighbor's cat. A coon will find a fried chicken leg faster than a stripper can locate your wallet.
It's true that everybody (including raccoons and hawks) loves chicken! It's like ringing the dinner bell when you free-range your birds or have them fenced in behind regular poultry wire, and the predators in your area will rise to the challenge.
We built our coop like Fort Knox. No poultry wire, only welded wire half-inch hardware cloth (raccoons will pull a chicken's head right through a one-inch poultry wire and chew its head off, a sight you don't want to see). At the ground, an extra foot of the hardware cloth was bent at a 90-degree angle outward and then covered with soil and cinder blocks (no digging under the fence here). Raccoons can climb, so we also bit the bullet and sprung for the extra expense of hardware cloth on the roof of the run, although people have used heavy-duty polypropylene netting successfully.
A radio plays in the coop in night and motion lights let us know if there's any activity. We keep two Havaharts baited with marshmallows 24/7 to catch the coons (not the neighborhood cats) around the run, and any caught go swimming in a 55-gallon drum we keep close by. (Relocation is illegal in many states, as you'd just be transferring your problem predator to someone else to deal with.) Mr. Mossberg and supervision while free-ranging during the day would provide an additional layer (as it were) of protection, although most chicken predators (except for hawks) are nocturnal.
There's a wealth of info about all things chicken here, where 50,000-some flock keepers would be happy to help you:
i tried to raise chickens so many time, each time lose them all to the raccoons. can you tell me how to deal with them, i never see them during the day.
We keep two Havaharts baited with marshmallows 24/7 to catch the coons (not the neighborhood cats) around the run, and any caught go swimming in a 55-gallon drum we keep close by. (Relocation is illegal in many states, as you'd just be transferring your problem predator to someone else to deal with.)
Please don't tell me that you drown raccoons instead of quickly and efficiently killing them with a blade. This sounds like you're having fun with animal torture rather than doing what you need to do to protect your chickens. If I misread what you're saying, I apologize. If not: for shame!
Please don't tell me that you drown raccoons instead of quickly and efficiently killing them with a blade. This sounds like you're having fun with animal torture rather than doing what you need to do to protect your chickens. If I misread what you're saying, I apologize. If not: for shame!
I would disagree that blade killing is more humane than drowning. I've dropped a lot of animals in a garbage can of water and they are gone before you know it. Killing a raccoon with a blade is problematic. I've never done it, but it is fraught with possible mistake. I wouldn't even try it. Maybe you have a good technique but one can't even kill a pig with a blade dependably.
What Wilson said. Using a blade exposes YOU to danger.
And let's keep our personal preferred methods for predator disposal from taking over the thread. You can go to the Hobbies sub-forum if you'd like to discuss that in detail:
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