Coon Down

Last year our little hobby farm was being terrorized by coons. They would sneak into our coop and either totally demolish a chicken or just tear a head off and leave a wasted body laying there (which was SO annoying...at least eat the thing if you are going to kill it). I think we ended up loosing 8 or 9 hens before we ended up trapping and shooting two of the little boogers. Things had been pretty quiet around here this summer and I was feeling pretty happy about that, until this Monday. I had a laying hen that just decided one night that she was not going into the coop at night. I chased her and chased her and she wouldn't relent. Fine, I thought..it's your death sentence and I finally locked up the coop to keep the other 30 chicks and chickens safe.
Sure enough, the next morning a pile of feathers lay on the ground and I knew the hen had become coon cuisine. I knew that once a coon got a taste, he would be back for more. That night we tied the chicken entrance door shut but forgot to lock it and a coon must have been on his way for seconds because the door was pried open, but THANKFULLY, Abby (our old grandma dog) scared it away before it got in. The third night we wised up and locked the door and in the morning found chunks, literally chunks taken out of the door from a coon gnawing on the wood to get in. This meant war. I had been wanting a coop like the one I have for a long time and no way was I going to let a raccoon tear it up. Not to mention the fact that I have a lot of time into the meat chickens inside the coop, and they are going to be MY dinner! I set out a bowl of fly bate (super deadly poison) mixed with RC Cola on the outside of the coop, a trap that could chop your hand off in the inside of the chicken run and if that didn't work Shawn was going to sit out in a chair with his gun and wait. You would have to be the Indiana Jones of coons to get past this obstacle course!
Today when I got up at 6:00am the first thing I thought of was my chickens (yes, I have become that girl) and I got on my boots to see if we had gotten anything. Oh joy when I saw the dead coon laying next to the fly bate with blue drool coming out of its mouth!! My chickens are safe again....for now.