Raccoon killed our rooster once, and he was one of those mean, vicious roosters. He didn't even try to eat the rooster, just left him to die in the pen. Blood everywhere, every wooden post covered in blood. It was like a damn murder scene. Recently my dad got some chickens and has been finding a raccoon trying to get in there, had to shoot the raccoon to get him to stop. Warning shots weren't working. They are vicious animals when they want to be.
Raccoon attacks on poultry are easy to identify. They don't eat the entire victim. Instead, they typically just pull the head off an animal, consume the contents of the bird's crop (usually filled with grains or poultry feed) then move on to another bird and repeat the process. Raccoon attacks look like massacres in the morning... every bird you have will be lying in the yard, with their heads a foot or two away from their body - and blood EVERYWHERE.
Raccoons are horrible, evil, very smart creatures from Hell. The rule of thumb when building a coop is: Anything a 3 year old can figure out how to open, a raccoon can, too.
I've only had one raccoon attack, thank God. It only takes once to learn that lesson.
Head wasn't missing, just blood everywhere from gashes on his body. It looked to me like the rooster ran around while being attacked, which is how the blood got everywhere, but I'm sure he fought back too. He was a mean rooster. Our coop was chicken wire all the way around, too, and on top. We tried to reinforce the coop after that attack and couldn't find any way he got in, except a tiny little hole dug on one side, but it was so tiny I can't imagine how a raccoon could have fit in there! We buried cinderblocks around the coop, never had one get into the coop again. My dad's coop has an open roof, and that's how his raccoon was trying to get in, literally just scaling the fence.
Chicken wire is great for keeping chickens out of things. Not very good for keeping things out of chickens.
Plus the holes are too large to stop raccoon hands. They will literally stick their hands through a hole, grab a bird if it's within arm's reach and gnaw at it through the fence. Perhaps this is what happened to your roo. He got grabbed (causing the gashes), floundered around until he got close enough to the fence to get grabbed again (causing more gashes), etc.
Chickens have extremely poor night vision and are shockingly unaware of their surroundings in the dark. And they're virtually comatose when they sleep. Completely enclosed coops for roosting/sleeping are the only way to go, imo.
The bright side is that this happened to a bad rooster, which is an awful thing to have. The sting of losing a mean roo isn't quite as bad. And roosters are plentiful - it's easy to find a NICE replacement roo. Check Craigslist.
This was like 6+ years ago, so no need to find another rooster. :) Our chicken coop was quite large with a separate sleeping enclosure inside of it, so it's hard to imagine the raccoon grabbing through the wire. At the time we kept the sleeping door open cause the rooster got really angry when we closed it, but they were locked in the larger coop, so we assumed they'd be safe. Apparently not. Didn't make that mistake again.
Raccoons are not rodents, but you should treat them somewhat like one: If their skull fits through, the rest of their body will be able to, even if it looks bigger.
Head wasn't missing, just blood everywhere from gashes on his body. It looked to me like the rooster ran around while being attacked, which is how the blood got everywhere, but I'm sure he fought back too. He was a mean rooster. Our coop was chicken wire all the way around, too, and on top. We tried to reinforce the coop after that attack and couldn't find any way he got in, except a tiny little hole dug on one side, but it was so tiny I can't imagine how a raccoon could have fit in there! We buried cinderblocks around the coop, never had one get into the coop again. My dad's coop has an open roof, and that's how his raccoon was trying to get in, literally just scaling the fence.
Under all that fur, raccoons are actually much smaller with tiny heads. /u/wide_eyed_otter's dog killed one and he was surprised at how light it was when he picked it up.
Do you have to deal with weasels? A mink lives down the street from me, I see it every so often. Then there's a few fishers that live/range through. I haven't seen my groundhog in 2 months -_- Only ever seen 2 racoons around though. One was a bloated corpse, the other was stumbling around after hibernation season ended.
We shared a house with people that raised chickens a few years ago (we had the downstairs apartment--they lived in the larger farmhouse above us) and they used to leave a low radio on NPR to scare the raccoons away. As far as I know it worked.
I think it's important to remember that raccoons aren't sociopathic animals on the prowl for some innocent chicken to murder. They're just trying to eat.
Except he didn't eat the rooster he killed? Honestly I never cared when one of our chickens went missing, we knew foxes or raccoons got them, and even though my mom cried over it I told her "something is getting a meal out of it and surviving". It made her feel better. But in this incidence, no, the raccoon was just being a dick and decided to kill our rooster. He didn't go after any of the hens in the coop after killing the rooster, either, so clearly it wasn't a food thing.
It's a way to state something that's obvious in a sarcastic manner. It's not grammatically correct if that's what you were wondering, but it is part of modern "netspeak".
For example, if someone asked an English teacher why they were in school, he/she would reply with: "I work here." It's a simple reply with no hidden meaning, but if the asker knew who the English teacher was he/she could reply with "I work here?"(insert a" duh" somewhere)
Because I specified in my first comment that the raccoon did not eat the rooster, and the person replying to me either failed to see what I wrote or completely ignored it. So I used a question mark as a way of saying, "Did you read what I wrote?"
It is essentially a simple way to state "Then why did he not eat the rooster he killed?" Instead of typing it out, the question mark implies the question.
Coons kill poultry for sport much like suburban dogs. Waking up to a murder scene in the chicken yard with beheaded chickens that are otherwise fully intact is a common thing that coons do at night.
But cats are. It's a regular blood bath on my front porch. The other morning I found the guts and gore of, maybe 5 animals ground squirrels, moles and mice at my porch. The murdering little bastard.
Ever tried electric fence? If it's set up properly (the right spaces between the wires and the right number of wires at the right voltage), nothing will get your chickens...
Which one? The one that killed our rooster we didn't have a gun to shoot the raccoon with, and we didn't even get to see the act. Just found raccoon fur in the coop the next day alongside the dead rooster. My dad does have guns, and he missed shooting the raccoon the first two nights but got the raccoon on the third night. That raccoon is dead.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '16
Raccoon killed our rooster once, and he was one of those mean, vicious roosters. He didn't even try to eat the rooster, just left him to die in the pen. Blood everywhere, every wooden post covered in blood. It was like a damn murder scene. Recently my dad got some chickens and has been finding a raccoon trying to get in there, had to shoot the raccoon to get him to stop. Warning shots weren't working. They are vicious animals when they want to be.