Handsome 54 - Love that coop! It looks like you have 6 New Hampshire Reds. I have 3 Rhode Islands and 9 New Hampshire Reds. We purchased a pre-built shed and DH modified it to be a coop. There is an attached courtyard that looks almost exactly like yours. Even has the little chickie door with a ramp. I lock everything up at night - including their chickie door. There are many coons who roam around nightly and I find many of the veggies nibbled on. Can't blame it all on the coons. There are deer that nibble the tops of my hyacinth bean vines and snow peas that are planted along the 4ft. fence. And the bunnies eat the tops of some of the green beans and cukes. It's a never ending battle so I usually plant a lot more than I need.

Ten years ago, when I first moved out to the country I had a small gaggle of geese I raised myself by hand. They would eat out of my hand, very affectionate, and I made them a little pond when they were goslings. They would take naps with me-- I loved them and my little flock of chickens very much. So they all made their nests around the barn area and all of them hatched goslings of their own. It was really something to see, they were all beautiful Toulouse geese. Then early one morning I went out as usual to feed everybody, and to my everlasting horror I found them all dead. Torn to pieces, not eaten, mind you, just killed and torn to pieces, all the goslings with their heads torn off. I ran to the hen house and opened the door to find two raccoons in there busily killing my chickens-- there were six dead on the henhouse floor. I screamed for my husband to get the gun, screamed so loud he heard me all the way in the house, and scared the raccoons so bad they went back out a three inch ventilation hole at the top of the henhouse wall (which is how they got in) as slick as a whistle, I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't have seen it with my own eyes. I have since come to the conclusion that they can flatten their bodies out to an incredible degree, their heads are very flat, and I suppose their rib cages can flatten out much like rats' can. We have since put chicken wire over every ventilation hole in the hen house. I began to realize then that raccoons are not the adorable little Walt Disney-esque creatures I used to believe them to be. But I still used Have-a-Heart traps over the years to try to control them, driving them far away and releasing them. Until last week. When I found my favorite duck, Francis, a beautiful male Rouen with the most beautiful feathers I've ever seen, dying, partially eaten alive, because I was unavoidably late getting home to close the hen house and the raccoons had come. My dog was going crazy when I got home trying to get into the enclosed henyard, which I ran to from the car, as fast as I could, I flung open the henyard gate, my dog ran in and chased the raccoon out of the yard, leaving me to put my once-beautiful half-eaten Francis out of his misery. I cried over that one, folks. I'm still sick about it. We've now strung electric wire above and along the henyard fence, and I'll be shooting the raccoons I catch from now on. They carry rabies, and you people are foolish to feed them and invite them onto your property. They are very intelligent, I'll give them that, and they can modify their behavior as needs be to get what they want. But they are the original natural born killers. Be careful.

I think this is a very tough issue. We chose to live on conservation b/c of the wildlife that we might see. We have lived in our home for over 4 years and I've never seen a 'coon or 'possum in our yard. We did have an armadillo issue for which we hired a trapper to catch and relocate to his acreage (he said that's what he would do and I hope he did). Other then that, I have never had a problem with any animal eating/stealing/destroying anything I have grown. I have a 40-mile roundtrip commute to my office each day. Every day, I see so many poor animals that have been run over. At the rate I am seeing roadkill, I truly question that there are more of them than there are of us. Look at the amount of habitat loss! I also blame some, certainly not all, of the animals that get hit on people not paying attention to the road and/or speeding. One of the main roads leading to where we live is a very dark, narrow, 2-lane road. Because I have seen deer, rabbits, 'coons, etc., I know to drive as slow as I can and pay extra attention to my surroundings. But that is my soapbox for another thread. Personally, I cannot justify killing these animals, unless like Nicki said, it's for food or the animal is suffering. Call me a bleeding heart, but I personally do not think it is right to kill or harm these animals because they eat our veggies. Like Marcia and others have said, my philosophy in my yard is to live and let live. I have enough space and grow enough stuff to be able to share with the wildlife that live around me.

Dirtgirl - loved your writings about the bobcat/coon encounter! We have a few bobcats here in North Texas, but so many new houses have been going up the last few years, many of the critters who were here 10 years ago have now headed to more secluded spots. We keep a swing in the woods on our property. One night, several years ago, we were setting in the swing, night had fallen and we were armed only with a flashlight. It had been so quite, I was sure nothing was going to be viewed that night. But I turned on the flashlight and it shined right into the beautiful eyes of a silver fox who was standing about 10 feet away from us. How we didn't hear it approach, I'll never know. It was not afraid of us and wandered along it's way. We were so delighted! Back into darkness - still very quite, so again I turned on the light and this time, we saw what we were hoping not to see - a skunk. Very quietly, we got up and hurried up the creek bank and out of those woods. That night viewing was over in a hurry. We see lots of critters around here - one of the real joys of country living. Too bad the country is vanishing here, but we've seen and enjoyed this place for years now. We are truly blessed. Janice in Texas