This evening around 7:30 a stray dog ... looked like a Bull Mastiff walked right into my front yard through the arbor gate ... I'd left the 8 ft wide fence-gate open to the driveway. The dog was the size of a St. Bernard. He didn't seem to be interested in chickens but they were all on the other side of the fence but one hen and her clutch of 11 chicks. The dog did not seem to be interested in poultry. It had better not come back. I cannot believe people letting this kind of dog out to roam. Kelly in Moxee
Killer Mink rampage .... they are BAD !
People are careless. We lost a lot of pullets a few years back due to a neighbors friend bringing their dogs to the country to 'run free'. He lost a lot of money! Vet bill for shrapnel in dogs rears, pay for pullets & county fine!
Hope it doesn't come back with a friend or for a snack, Kelly. They can do a lot of damage just 'playing' with any fowl.
PFA i gues they will think twice about letting there dogs run free then
Cheryl, I closed the fence. Chances are he'll come back to wander around outside our enclosed compound but the next time I'll make sure his former owners wonder where ole' poochie ran off to. I do not practice the SSS routine .... I just let them have it ... believing or knowing they do not make it their home so far away but if they do ... its curtains. Last yr I saw one run off yelping like crazy .... about a month later I was out walking and saw the same darn dog face down in the dust along the adjacent farm road less than a quarter mile from the spot where I saw it last. It looked as though it had been been shot by someone but I couldn't really tell. Wandering dogs do not last long in farm country with livestock at peril. Most all the farmers around here shoot 1st. Kelly in Moxee
Gosh ..... another REALLY interesting thread and its buried. ..... bumpty, bumpty, bump!
That same enormous dog walked down our driveway last night real late ... while I was asleep. My wife said it was so big ... she thought it was a human by the sound of gravel under its feet. No kidding the dog is close to 175 lbs.
Kelly in Moxee
What happened to the minks?
susan cooper wrote a series of books for young adults, and in the final novels minks are featured as minions of the ultimate evil in wales.
but gee kelly, it sure sounds like you're getting a *charge* out of killing things. :(
This message was edited Jul 26, 2008 10:17 PM
Is the dog just a wandering visitor? We have one neighbor black lab, huge (named moose). He comes by every now & again to visit my flocks & dogs, but never bothers a thing. Just likes to check things out I guess. Big ole lover boy. You think this dog is the same way? Ever bother with any of the animals at all?
How is the mink & weasel problem doing? Haven't caught anything but mice in the live trap - they just eat & run. But nothing bothering the peahen's & their eggs. Been a couple of weeks now, so thinking another predator got whatever it was or it moved on to bigger and better things down river......
Kelly, could it be possible to put some kind of poison out for say coons or possums. It would be safe from the birds and my dogs. Like in some raw hamburger meat. I knew a cattle rancher that did that, he was having hades with coyotes. I had no problems with the vermin last night, at least they didnt get into the pen, dont know if they tried or not, the GP's were up here out side the yard.
Tia,
Those dogs ought to keep predators at bay. I suppose they're not always immediately next to the yard and the poultry? Now wouldn't that be nice?
The mink seem to have gotten less hungry. I have a NEW duckling as of yesterday ....yipppee !! ... a PERFECT 100% little Swedish Blue. I building him a brooder coop today.
Kelly
This message was edited Jul 27, 2008 9:51 AM
No they are not, and I am afraid for them to be there when I have the chicks out. They do like to play with things that bounce. Now once the chicks get older them dogs wont bother them. they are my moms dogs but come up here with the pony's.
Boy I don't envy you guys your minks!! The down side of a healthier ecosystem...
We had a family of foxes move in here about a month ago. Never lost a chicken to predation til that happened. They took 4 3-month old chicks the first evening, one the next. Then they started coming in the yard morning noon and night -all times. We're trying to figure out how to trap them without trapping our cats or dogs. They come in past the goats and horse (who watch!!), snag a chicken while chicken stands cussing at it(BOCK#*#!) The dogs will run 'em off before they can dig in, but the foxes are too smart for my blood.
On the safe coop issue- I've been toying with the idea of an inside-out corrugated metal shed with nesting boxes about 4' off the ground. Any critters could only climb on the wood frame which if it's on the outside would protect any birds on the inside. And someone gave us some chain-link fencing which I thought would make a good floor if you could put it down w/ some dirt and grass so they could still scratch. The first 3 mos after hatching might be trouble, but...
As much as I didn't want to, I too am toying with the idea of re-building the peafowl pen. After seeing Kelly's Fortress thread, it gave me some ideas of other ways I could use my cage wire, hardware cloth & all that metal siding material from old sheds friends gave me. Still want them to have that outside feeling, be totally protected and adequate shelter. More brainstorming..... They are safe for now.
Grownut, maybe some 1/2inch hardware cloth on top of the chain-link floor? Just a thought......
Grownut, we just recently had a metal roof put on our house. We also had an extension built onto our henhouse. We had a fiberglass roof over our back porch which we removed when we had the roof put on. We took the fiberglass (2ft x 8ft) and dug 2ft down all around the extension and put the fiberglass panels there. I don't know of anything that can dig deeper than that to get into the building. We will probably be putting in a cement floor at a future date. We have one in the original part of the henhouse, but DH said let's try this first.
Of course we don't seem to have the predators here that everyone else has. I think it is because we have the coop surrounded by orange snow fencing, but have been told that that is impossible. But, since we installed that, the only thing that went into the coop was a possum. Our next-door neighbor has had them, but they stay away from our place. He doesn't have chickens, either. I also put a couple of scarecrows in the coop that I made using an old top and pants sewn together at the waist and hung on a metal hanger that I hang up around the coop and move every few days. Again, I don't know if that is what works, but it does for me. BTW, we have coyotes, foxes, raccoons, possums, weasels, badgers, bears, feral cats, and feral dogs, and other predators that I can't think of right now.
GG
Oh yes, we also have bobcat, lynx, cougar, and skunk.
Yeah, I guess you'd need smaller holes to really stop rodents and as long as it's covered w/ a couple of inches of dirt they'd scratch away like always. If my birds were smart enough to fly up away from the fox instead of watching it I'd still be able to leave 'em completely free range 'cuz nothing can climb that corrugated metal but oh well... Nice you have all those materials available to you though.
We have a converted metal covered shed with a wood floor and concrete perimeter so the coop situation is good. So far. I just wish the structural wood was on the outside to keep coons and others from getting any ideas. DH thinks I'm nuts- no harm no foul.
GG - My initial crazy thought was that after framing you could put the metal/ fiberglass etc on the INSIDE. My chickens fly up to roost but I don't think anything that didn't fly could get there provided your boxes were about 18" from any edge they could hold.
The orange fencing thing... We've actually had really good luck with very floppy saggy chicken wire -I've been feeling guilty- but thinking perhaps the reason it's working is because it's so flexible that the critters don't know how to hold on to it to chew or where to start digging. It just moves and tangles if you push at it. But the few spots where it's solid the cats start climbing. Gotta be some reason it works for some situations and not others
Grownut, we have the floppy chicken wire thingy to keep the hens in. We used to have hens (Araucanas) that could fly over the top of a six foot fence. When we added the extra foot and let it be floppy, it stopped them from that. They can't get a toe hold on the floppy part and keep their balance.
On the wood floor with concrete perimeter, depending on how deep the concrete goes, you would probably be safe if it is deep enough. I remember when we lived in Detroit, we had to have 18" deep rat walls around our garage to keep them out. So, like I said, if you can go 2ft down, I don't think you would have a problem keeping predators out of the henhouse.
I call my building a henhouse because the "coop" is actually a 40ft by 100ft yard that is enclosed with regular chicken wire and the orange fencing. I just wanted to clarify that.
Sorry, I hadn't quite gotten the 2 feet thing. Reading too fast though I AM old enough to know better. A 2' floppy wire thingy will hold ours most of a day. 30" has kept them out of the garden for 3 yrs, though like you say, they can fly up 6'. I've chalked this up to puzzlement. It's just over their little chicken heads... They have outsmarted me a few times though so they're not idiots. Um. Just chickens?
The floppy top idea is the one they came up with in the Australian Government Fox and Feral Cat Exclusion Fence. If you had a straight rigid fence, it had to be at least 5'11". If you attached a floppy curved bit to the top you could lower the fence considerably and still have good exclusion. I think I listed the site in some thread somewhere. They could have saved a lot of money and just asked you guys:0)
Ummm. It's called Minimum Effort Fencing (MEF) Put up SOMETHING today before all He** breaks loose and then don't fix unless you have to. (I'm speaking for myself here and not GG. Hers was likely a more intelligent choice rather than idiot's luck...;)
i sorta skimmed over the thread. I would advise ALL of you to get a 410 shotgun! Get big enough shot and up close, it'll kill almost anything. As far as being to big with a 20 guage, who cares, T HE AMMO JUST COST MORE, BUT YOU AREN'T GONNA EAT THE CARCUS!! Sorry about shouting, I hit the wrong key! If I had that many minks, I'd invest in steel traps like my daddy used to trap with! Or use poison, if they get to bad! Don't let them get the best of you.
Game Fowl will just naturally steal out their nests If they're not confined! And it's really hard to pen up the cocks!
Tia,
POISON ...... my only question is how do you keep your poultry from eating the poison that is wrapped in hamburger ? I suppose if your birds just don't go so far ... then its OK. I started putting traps out when I had only chickens enclosed inside a 1.5 acre pasture .... the traps were placed on the other side of the fence line. 1st thing that happened ... the chickens started reaching their heads through the fence to get at the bait ... snap !!! & I'd caught (killed instantly) 2 hens before I could wake up in the morning ... jeez. Needless to say ... I moved the traps further away. Once I got Guinea Fowl ... the traps were removed. I had to significantly alter my trapping methods with the Guinea Fowl and now with the Game Fowl. The only place I can use the conibear traps are in the gully wash where the stream is and they have to be about 100 yards or more from the hen house. During the daytime ... I disable the traps when I get up in the morning and set them before I go to bed. I have live traps ... boxes with doors that slam shut and lock ... the guineas don't like to go in them nor do the chickens.
TRAPS and poison can be a two edged sword. I suggest placing them as far away from your free range birds as you can get almost but yet still be on your land.
IF your poultry are locked up always and if you don't have cats and other small pets to be concerned about dying ... the traps and poison can be close to the poultry run perimeter ... at least 18 inches distant (on the outside) so your geese or ducks with long necks can not get to the bait or spring a trap. This does not apply to me but it would seem to be a logical thing to be able to do.
One important point. If you have several traps around your poultry perimeter. The perimeter fence could have have holes in it that are half the size of a chicken and you could still eliminate the problems with predators. The idea being ... if you catch the predators in traps before they get to the poultry area ... the perimeter could theoretically be quite porous and still be effective. A perimeter like this basically just keeps the birds in and the traps would be killing all the potential predators. So the fence perimeter has only the one purpose ... to keep the birds in and away from the traps or poison.
Kelly in Moxee
My kid brother suggested rigging up an exploding chicken to take out our fox problem, but he doesn't really appreciate my girls as he should. And he left it to me to make sure the fox got the right one...
:0)
Emphasis on "KID"? Tee hee! ^_^
Should laughter BE this painful?! And did you know I have Boer kids watching all this?
What are Boer kids?
They are either very young South Africans of Dutch descent or:
Young meat goats of the Boer breed.
Sorry. Mine are four-legged, furry, and say nyeaaah any time they think you need conversation. They are South Africans but I doubt the Dutch descent part.
Audrey, you are right about the .410 shotgun. And, it doesn't kick. I own two of them and have used them to take rabbits, squirrels, and deer. But, like you said, the ammo costs a little more than 12gauge. We also have used them to kill the two possums we caught around the henhouse.
We also have live traps that we have used in the past to trap raccoon sized predators. We haven't used them in the past 4yrs because we haven't seen any sign of predation around.
GG
This message was edited Jul 27, 2008 11:36 PM
Unfortunately, I do not have the funds right now to buy another gun. The 20gauge was suggested years ago by FIL, when I ran into a bobcat one morning. And also for the coons. Have thought about the .410; but with last year of H.S. & college to look forward too, my funds will be in demand as promised.
Main problem is, I work all day, then teen to be with / cart around, etc - therefore not always home to shoot at whatever predators may come calling. I do have the live trap set (since so many family pets & neighbor pets come calling & do no harm) I don't want them hurt. Live trap best for when I am not there. Nothing caught yet; however, no signs of predator anymore either..... Quit using it, cause no predators the last few years until now? Wonder if the floods sent them back this way??
Maybe I can start hiding $20+ a month from myself for new gun & ammo????? Never liked the things with kids around; but, since I moved here 10yrs ago had to change my mind! Do not intend to leave here either, nor lose family members.
Sorry to ramble,
Cheryl - Pea
If i did the poison it would be on top of the brooder, out of reach of my small dogs. I was mainly wondering if coons, weasels, possums would eat raw meat.
Possums will eat anything, I think! Coons like crafish, that type of things, and yes, eggs! Weasels like blood! They will cut off the heads and drink the blood! Possums like dead things! Why don't you drop a hint for a 410 for Christmas, or birthday? ^_^ I used to kill stuff with a pellet gun. Got really good with it, too!!
My thing with the gun is, i would have to be there when it came around. I have yet to see anything around here except for an occasional snake. And the prey birds. Hawks, owls, crows. I would do ok with a pellet or bb gun. Again I would have to see them. I think we got it figured out now, it was human error on my part that they were attacked. Hubby got me fixed right up, but I am sure they will try to come back.
What do you use for poison?
I don't know if you can still buy strychnine (sp) anymore, but a tiny bit put in a hole in an egg will work!
yes I think I can buy it, but i do have the "over the counter" rat poison. HMMMMM would that kill a snake also?
If it would eat it! I think most snakes eat eggs!
My mom has been putting golf balls in her nests, and it has run off the snakes. The chickens did get revenge recently, they were eating a dead snake. That had a golf ball in its gut.
That is so funny!!