Have a friend sit out there one night with a shotgun. If you dont kill them, they will come back.

 

There is NO comparison between a store bought egg and a true farm egg.

Better looking, better tasting, deeper color.....store bought eggs suck.

Plus, if you catch the hen in the process of laying, you can squash the egg flat before it completely hardens....thats kind of cool.

 

I prefer a .22 pellet rifle. It won't scare the chickens or upset the neighbors so it's better for urban pest control.
At least, that's what I've heard...

 

Those big male coons can be pretty tuff i have killed a bunch around the hen house over the years..If you dont kill them pretty quick they will come after you..I would stick with a 22 or a compound bow..if noise is a problem..chain link fence all around and cover the top with it to is about the only thing that will work.. I have seen them chew and dig their way through chicken wire..I do prefur my country eggs i know whats in them..lol..good luck bill

 

On second thought if you live in town and tree huggers are feeding the coons. it would be better to borrow live traps from the spca and than just drop them off at the pound..it may save you from the hasel of peta burning down your home to save the coons....good luck bill

 

I wonder if a storebought egg would be sufficent to trap these critters. I would use a fresh egg if I could get to it before them. Even with me checking several times a day I have not harvested one egg from 7 month old hens. I know meat and fish is good to trap them but I am not interested in trapping the neighbors cats.

 

I've always uses the SSS method when dealing with pest. Shoot shovel & shutup. I use a 22 & hollowpoint shorts. Head shots will stop them quick.

 

Coons are tough customers and crafty. Don't know if this works but it sure worked on dogs that were killing my gramps chickens back in the 60s.

This could be dangerous and kill you or the animal if you don't know what you are doing and use a lot of caution. If you don't under stand electricity, you probably shouldn't try this...

What we did was go to the local butcher shop and ask for any throw away meat. We got a couple old kidneys.

We went to RadioShack and bought a step down/isolation transformer that had something like 120VAC and 60VAC outputs, low current. We put long insulated wires on the taps and stripped about 1 foot of the ends bare. We strung the wires thru the kidneys and laid the kidneys on a wooden board. In after thought we might have improved it by stapling the wires down onto the boward to hold the kidneys in place.

We wetted down the ground all around the boards real well.

That night my cousin and I and gramps and the neighbor and his wife slept out.

Round midnight we heard a yelp and saw a big dog had just got a bite of the electrified kidney. During the night we had various visitors and all of them first went to the kidneys before they got to the chicken pen. ALL of them got a big surprise and one, poor dog, got the wire stuck in his teeth. I swear it looked like he was running in place since the ground was muddy and he couldn't get traction. I even think we saw or imagined sparks. NONE of them was killed and we NEVER had problems with dogs again.

It was a hillarious night, I know, me and my cousin are sick little monkeys, but there was a lot of action and the neighbors wife kept whimpering all night every time a dog would be lured into our trap.
So maybe it will work for coons. But like I said it is probably unsafe and with all the tree huggers it may be illegal especially if one does get killed, tho none of the dogs we caught were.

Just my opinion and experience from back when we could get away with a lot more,

Jim Henderson

 

Hmmm... maybe modify the design to use a commercially available electric fence controler. Get one that they use for dogs and I doubt you'd have any legal issues. However, if you're going to go that far, why not just use the electric fence like it's supposed to and surround the chicken coop with it.

 

I appreciate everyones input. I think I have decided on sealing the cage better and putting out live catch traps. I would still like some suggestions on what would be a good bait for coons that cats may not like as much. I know that may not be possible because their diets are so similiar. I now have undeniable evidence coons are the culprit. It rained last night and made the fresh graded dirt in my yard mushy. I saw some of the biggest coon tracks I have ever seen in my life leading to and from the pen. Thanks everyone.

 

Just an update. I am getting eggs now. I think their may still be some predation but I am getting a decent amount of eggs. I tried those fresh eggs for the first time today and they were out of this world. The shells were thicker than store bought. The yellows were a richer color and they actually had flavor. To put some folks mind at ease I did not have to harm a single predator. What I did was clear some brush growing close to the pen. The very next day after I cleared that brush I started getting eggs. No more paper tasting storebought eggs for me. I still have some brushclearing to do and I am getting the pen sealed up better. Thanks everyone for your suggestions I am still gonna incorporate some of these ideas for better predator management.

 

When I as a kid visited the family farm during the summer, I used to wait with my hands cupped underneath the hens waiting for the fresh eggs to pop out.
Can't beat a fresh laid chicken egg.......Well I guess you can... but I prefer soft poached on toast with Saskatachewan farmer type headchese.