On Raccoons

It's been a rough spring. We lost 45 pullets to raccoons over the past month and change. We were looking at a great egg-laying flock, and they are simply gone. 

After we had lost the first batch, I had set up a catch trap, but a raccoon literally broke the door (bent the sheet metal in half), busting out. I set up a blind and got a pot shot off at one, but they show up at dark, and I'm not equipped with FLIR or other technology for that work.

We called in our local trapper, Steve Colvin (of Colvin Animal Damage Control ), and set up traps and waited. We caught one and thought we might be through the worst of it, but they came back. So we kept running the traps. 

To date, we've caught five adult raccoons and two adult possums, all working the coop. 

I never realized just how much protection work our brother/sister Great Pyrenees pair was doing until they passed away. We're looking at a new bonded pair here soon, but this is just frustratingly depressing.