Chicks – 0, Raccoons – 5

For two days, our new Ideal 246s were roosting up in the tree.

First night there was 9.

The next night 10, the next it was 11.

I told Farmer Brown that we should do something, but alas, I didn’t.   It’s easy to be lazy with so many things to do.

We woke up this am to a massacre in the yard:

Evidence of the chicken massacre

Five Ideals are missing.    Am assuming they were eaten, but there’s the off chance that they just ran off to join the circus or similar.

This is certainly not the fault of the electric fence – I’d been keeping it off at night.

Making some changes:

  1. Ensure that all adolescent chicks are locked into their coop at night.
  2. Keep the electric fence on at night.

It’s a lot of work to get chickens from chick/pullets to where they can actually throw you an egg.

Farmin’ ain’t easy.