Angry and Frustrated.

As some of you might know via Facebook last night we had a raccoon attack.   We lost one chicken and thankfully because of our "guard" dog the raccoon dropped one mid-snack.  This is sooo frustrating to us.  Mostly because we have had this happen before.   In the course of 2 years we have gone through 5 coops...trying to find the balance between happy chickens and uneaten ones.  We thought we had found a fool-proof system and once again I find myself blaming my lack of care taking to losing a life and having one pretty hurt chicken currently awaiting an emergency vet clinic.

When we decided to get chickens we read all the books, joined the chicken forums, and even took a couple classes and one thing that I feel we were never warned of is how hard having chickens can actually be.  Don't get me wrong usually they are pretty easy, and not much work but now having lost over 9 chickens in two years I thought I would share some of my pit falls so hopefully others do not have to wake up to a bloodbath the next day.  I am doing this with feelings of shame and guilt but to be honest we went into "chicken keeping" with a lot of forethought, and education and it was surprising how many things have surprised us during these two years.

1. In Oregon you will not want to open/shut your coop every day & night, especially when it is cold and raining.  There are a couple of solutions, both with positive and negatives.  One is to not put your coop super far back from your back door.  The plus side is that it will make the painful walk in your pj's every am or in the rain/dark every pm much easier.  The negative is that the smell/rats that come with chickens will be much closer to your home....Our solution (so far) is to find an all in one coop with both the run and  coop completely raccoon safe (unless you let the out for one sunny day and don't lock them up right away once the sun goes down).  The positive is that you don't have to run outside all the time but the negative is that these types of coops can be a lot costlier (more materials) and your chickens might not get as much room as you (or they) would like to walk around.

2. Another way we have lost chickens is by introducing pullets too early to very dominate birds.  One thing I was never told is that chickens are cannibals. Once they taste blood they will keep going.  I am not going to get graphic but this is one thing I wish people talked about a lot more with new chicken owners.  I did research, talked to knowledgable individuals and yet when I introduced two pullets (after days of letting them "smell" each other out) my Rhode Island Red completely went crazy on them and sadly killed them.  Afterwards I turned to the forums and told my story and out came tons of stories of this happening to others.  I don't know if people are ashamed, scared to admit this happened or what but it is something that should be shared.  It was heart-breaking to raise chicks for months to then loose them in one night.

So here is my advice: if you have a dominate bird (Rhode Islands seem to be the most notorious of this) either raise your pullets for months separately, until they are like a full sized bird and then if you put them together (at night with no light around them) make sure that either you wake up before the sun rises to let    them out or have a coop set-up where they can escape/move around A LOT easily to dodge pecks.  Our other solution was to buy other dominate birds (more than one!!) and then place them in a run together for a week but at night keep them in separate coops until they have worked out their new pecking order. There were fights but no one was horrible injured and they seemed happy once they all got acquainted.

3.   One other lesson we have learned is that when you raise chicks you will get some that have genetic issues.  BE PREPARED.  Have a plan so that when one needs to be put down you know what/how your going to do it.  Believe me that you won't want to figure this out at the last minute...We sadly had no plan and had to make some hard decisions based on the tools we had at hand...if we had a plan in place (including who was doing what..and who was comfortable with what) and the proper tools I think the situation would have been MUCH less stressful to both us and the animal.

Yes chickens are awesome, yes they are great, useful animals, even pets.  But like all animals they do have their negatives/their challenges.  I hope that fully sharing our downfalls will help others avoid them.  I also know that some of you out there will poo-poo us taking one bird to the vet.  But honestly it is our fault they got hurt, it was our lack of knowledge/planning.  I think that is the worst part, the knowing that it could of been avoided.

For chicken owners currently if you have a raccoon problem there are some options.  We just called Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and asked them about Raccoons they said that it is the states job to trap them but when we said that we had lost 3 chickens they said that because the raccoons are attacking our "wildlife" they are mailing us a permit (for free) to trap the bastards.  They said that Raccoons are really hungry right now and acting VERY aggressive, so please watch for them with your dogs/cats/small children (seriously...he said all of these things).   They also do not only come out at night during this time of year...they have been seen quite frequently during the day.. He also told us to NEVER approach one without a gun (even though you can't "officially" shoot them within city limits) as they will attack humans.  We found a trap that is dog-proof and chicken-proof and ordered it off of amazon....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prCJCHY468Y


Wish us luck.  I would like to give a shout out to North Portland Animal Hospital.  This is the second time they have helped us out in a crisis and they are caring/not pushy and have amazing hearts (they have seen me cry more than most).  They understand people have to choose sometimes between paying rent and pet operations and have never pressured/guilted me to do anything.  As someone with a very high maintenance pug I appreciate this.  The vet even showed me a website to get her meds for like half!  They have one bird vet and even though his day is packed he personally called me and when I said I had called all the referrals and that the other vets were all on vacation he is shoving us in during his lunch break.  Really awesome people that I know I can trust.  Makes horrible situations manageable.

I know this isn't a super happy holidays post but I am hoping that it will help some.

Lacy