My prior postings about the chicken coop issues were all about the squirrels taking over the joint.....rats and a few snakes...and to give credit to the group of cannibalistic chickens is in order....all involved in taking the egg count to zero. Did I say those skunks were involved too?
We had to rethink the entire chicken operation. The solution was to rid the entire flock we had. Raise the height of the yard fence. Line the entire perimeter of the coop with underground chicken wire to keep critters from digging inward. Sanitized the coop and yard for anything that crawl ...slithered...hopped around....on the bacterial level.
In other words...we nuked the entire coop area!
New set of chickens made home in there a few months ago. All was going well......we were getting eggs! Whatever I did in that coop.....worked.
".....but why did I catch two crows in the chicken coop having lunch"?
Something that amazed me.....seeing these two in there......eating eggs! I never thought that crows would enter the coop house to steal. After some researching and talking to the old timers (again).....yes, the crows and those bluebirds will feast on the eggs.
The solution was simple. The egg thieving birds are not comfortable in a confined area. In front of the coop's door...I built a six foot long "tunnel" as seen in the picture below. That enclosure scares the predictor bird.
We have 50 more chicks line up for arrival in a few weeks from our hawk proof yard (we keep them in there til the chicks gain too much weigh for a hawk to attack). In the Spring....we are adding another 100 birds.
Those bad little birds won't go near that entrance for the past month now...and we are back into the egg business.
Time to buy bacon.....and hash browns. Again!
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