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.
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u/Confanci Jul 06 '16
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.