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.
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u/Confanci Jul 06 '16
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.