Reenforced, caught in the act

So this is the door latch that the predator, that I now know was a raccoon, spun open on Saturday night to get access to the coop, killing all three of our beloved chickens.  Over the weekend I bought some clasp hinges to make this scenario impossible going forward.  Since the next 4 days are going to have precious spare time I installed the hinges last night after work.

The main hinge body was anchored into the metal frame, the rotating clasp was mounted on the door.  I used left over lumber to screw into on the inside of the coop to make sure it was secure.

The double clasp arrangement had a side benefit of only allowing the main door latch to turn one direction to release, not that it matters anymore, the clasp locks will be doing all the work. I also want to put some sort of rig on the big front door to lock it.  The front door is heavy and probably too difficult for a raccoon to get into but at this point I don’t want to take any chances.

In total I may have spent 45 minutes reenforcing the coop, I wished I would have spent that 45 minutes prior to the coop being penetrated.  Before I walked back inside I went over to the spot the chickens are buried and apologized again for letting them down.

So you may wonder how I know definitively a raccoon was responsible for the killings.  My Uncle Randy made a suggestion on Facebook that I should do some nighttime surveillance.  Well I have the Samsung DVR system we use for the running club so I figured it was worth a shot.  Even though it was almost 9PM and sort of cold outside I pulled the coop out from behind the shed and close to the spot it was Saturday night.  I set up the DVR by the sliding door that leads to the lanai and strung the long cable wires out to the hill next to the pool.  I had two cameras set up, one pointed at either side of the coop.  The infrared lighting on the cameras gave a good picture of the coop and would surely reveal if anything stopped by during the night.

This morning the first thing I did was review the video at x64 speed.  I had gone through about 5 hours of footage without seeing anything but bugs.  All of a sudden I see something come into view from behind the camera and move towards the coop, right around 1:30AM  I stop the fast forward and back it up, there he is, a racoon.

He circled the coop two different times, the second time he got up on his back legs by the big front door.  He then came around to the side door that was breached during the attack and promptly climbed on top of the tire, pretty much demonstrating how he got access to the door latch.  Ironically he must have also used the piece of 1 x 10 board we had across the wheels for sun protection to get himself even higher.

I showed Cindy the video and as expected she was upset to see the raccoon stalking the now empty coop.  It just emphasized how we must be absolutely diligent in making sure the chickens are secure at night.  In addition to the clasps I installed yesterday we bought some more predator deterrent hardware last night on Amazon.  It includes more flashing LED predator lights, reflective/crackle tape to scare away hawks, and a solar powered, motion detecting LED spotlight.  I think the spotlight may be the most effective deterrent of the three, flipping on whenever an animal gets within 30 feet of the coop.

It’s upsetting to realize that the raccoon killed the chickens not for survival but more or less for sport.  I think the changes we are making will force future raccoons to find a new hobby.