I am feeding a Bobcat

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s not a good thing. :eek:

I live in the suburban Seattle area. There is a heavily wooded ravine area about 1/2 mile away. It’s not very big but at least several acres worth.

I also have chickens. We have a big fenced run, a much smaller enclosed run attached to the chicken coop. The coop is about 4x6’ and the enclosed run probably double that or so.

Early in December, I came home to a small pile of feathers and a partially eaten chicken. The other 6 chickens were non-plussed and unruffled. Thought maybe a neighbor’s cat or a feral cat might have got it. I made sure the chickens were locked in at night, and that was it.

We went to Jamaica for the week before Christmas. I had the chickens locked into the coop and covered run. Came home to small hole dug under the coop, about 3 days worth of eggs and nothing else. No signs of carnage. Just missing chickens and the shavings in the coop were scattered. Definitely not a raccoon (those fuckers leave a big mess and kill for sport). So, I filled in the hole and put some bricks on top.

We bought 4 new chickens 'cause we like the fresh eggs and oddly enough it’s kinda nice having a few critters at the back of the yard.

Next day I noticed that something tried to dig under the door. So, I dug down, buried some bricks, and then added pegs all around the chicken wire perimeter. Called animal control and they theorized we had a bobcat. Next day, saw that something pretty powerful had pulled away all the bricks and a big chunk of concrete. So, I reinforced the perimeter. Next morning, there was one area of the perimeter where something had dug about 2 inches under the chicken wire but didn’t get in. Man, oh man, I then put heavy log rounds around the entire base of the perimeter. Bobcats or raccoons are not able to get in.

I went on a two week business trip to China. Got home yesterday. I collected a bunch of eggs (my kids had made sure the chickens were watered but that was about it in my absence), and didn’t disturb the chicken that was trying to lay. Today I got home from work and got another half dozen eggs that were piled up. Saw that the bobcat had tried to get under the door (pulled away the concrete, bricks and dug down a little bit before giving up). Saw what appeared to be some bobcat tracks in my lawn (we’ve had a lot of rain, it’s been muddy, and there are what look like some tracks in the mud/grass). The perimeter was secure.

Then I counted 3 chickens. Looked in the coop and counted zero chickens. That leaves one MIA. WTF?

My best guess is that about a week ago my kids let the chickens out into the bigger run, one got taken during the day, and then didn’t notice anything missing when locking them up that night.

King County wildlife control doesn’t do trap and release., nor does the State of Washington They gave some advice and said that Craig’s list might yield a bow enthusiast that would sit out to shoot the varmint. (Can’t use a firearm in the city).

I asked my kids when was the last time they noticed all 4 chickens. “I dunno, maybe a week or so ago.” They were pretty perplexed when I said we’ve got a missing chicken. Ah, the first round of chickens were treated like pet royalty, now that the first 3 rounds of chickens are gone and we’re on the 4th batch, it’s pretty mundane to them. I wonder if they will even bother to name the 5th batch.

I haven’t seen or heard it, but we are definitely on the “let’s see if chickens are on the menu at China Guy’s house” daily or weekly agenda.

2

Any room for a big dog or two in your family’s life? They’re good at chasing off critters.

3

Put out a giant bowl of Meow Mix?

4

Well, I just saw the culprit. Not very clearly but it was on the roof of the chicken coop. I flipped on the outside lights (not very bright ones), went out the garage back door and witnessed the perp jump off the roof and bolt out the back corner of the yard. Definitely some kind of cat and not a raccoon. Couldn’t see it clearly if it was a cat or bobcat but didn’t seem like your basic house cat.

Checking with a buddy of mine in the neighborhood who grew up in rural Penn. He might have a crossbow I can borrow. Any other advice?

5

Havahart makes a box trap large enough for a coyote.

6

If you search for an “urban trapper” you’ll probably find a private service that will set a trap and remove the animal when it’s caught. Best to make sure that you’ll be around to check the trap every day, for the sake of the bobcat and/or any neighborhood pets that get snared! (Had to trap a raccoon that was nesting under my house - day 2, I walk outside and there’s my neighbor’s cat sitting in the trap looking mortified.)

7

Unless you’re an experienced hunter yourself, I’d try and the trap and removal/Pest removal services first, rather than borrowing a bow.

8

You’re feeding that weird guy from the Police Academy movies?

9

Electric fencing? Let’s see the sonufabitch claw through that.

10

Its trapping season and fur prices are really high. Put out a craigslist add for a trapper and make it known in the ad that you’ll want to see their license. In Washington they have to at least pass a basic exam before they can get their first trapping license.

11

Thanks. I just posted a craigslist add.

Also the local feed store explained I can get into a simple electric fence for under $100

12

Yeah, the “bulldozer” (charger) can be found for around $50, then a spool of wire, insulators, posts, etc would be around $50.

13

We did electric fence ourselves. It was an afternoon project for about 1/3rd of an acre. For a chicken coop, to prevent a recurring problem (there will be other critters that try this), this might be your best bet.

14

Yeah, I’d go the trapping route. Good luck. It’s so frustrating losing birds like that repeatedly. We finally built a coop that I think is genuinely raccoon proof–I think anyone who’s had chickens has dealt with some degree of carnage. At least the bobcat is taking the bodies away. Sucks to wake up to a bunch of eviscerated hens.

15

I have bobcats in the cedar thicket in the back couple acres of my place. No chickens - the resident hunter says he’s seen them from his tree stand, they apparently like the abundance on rabbits back there.

StG

16

I’ve kept chickens for 25 years in a house backing on 12,000 acres of timber lands. Yes, we have bobcats. Also mountain lions and coyotes, red tail hawks, great horned owls, skunks, foxes, raccoons, and possums. All of which will take chickens, although skunks and possums are more apt to steal eggs.

I’ve lost an entire flock overnight once. Most disappeared, a few piles of feathers, one dead chicken in the woods which had disappeared by the next morning. That was coyotes. They work together. Bobcats generally just take one at a time, but they will surely be back once they digest that one.

This is how I keep my hens safe these days:

  1. concrete floored night coop with aviary netting over all the openings. Aviary netting is just very small-sized poultry netting, too small for raccoons to get their hands through. You don’t even want to know what happens if they can get a hand through the netting. I close my hens up at dusk (and count them!) every night without fail. I used to occasionally fail to close up the house at dusk. Bad things happened.

  2. Second layer of protection is a wire-roofed cage to keep out climbers like cats. Cage is about 20 x 30’, only big enough for maybe 6-8 hens, and when I have more, I need to let them range more than this. This cage is dig-proof, because I’ve buried an outward-facing L of heavy wire fencing around the perimeter.

  3. At least few hours a day I let them out in an electrified-fence area. I use portable fence specifically made for poultry, it is an electrified plastic mesh about 3’ tall. The openings at the bottom are much smaller than those at the top, because you can’t keep chickens in with electric fence, their feathers insulate them from the shock so they walk right through it. So the hens can’t get out because the mesh openings are too small, and critters can’t get in because it’s electrified. It works very well. The place to get it from is a company called Premier One in Iowa. They are a superb resource.

Almost all the people I’ve known who started out with chickens, after a few run ins with predators, gave up keeping them. But if you take thorough precautions, you don’t have to let that happen.

Trapping or killing one bobcat will only open its territory to another bobcat. There really is no point to it. You may be left alone for awhile but if you don’t address the root issue, which is that you are not protecting your chickens properly, it will only happen again eventually.

Everybody out there likes chicken.

17

Also bobcats don’t dig much at all. Much more likely if you see digging it’s a raccoon or coyote.

18

Which was it??

19

Nonplus is the worst word in the English language because everytime you see it you have to check it’s meaning again, just to be sure.

Also, are landmines an option?

20

If you do trap it, please do the black hat guy thing