[coronabarb]

I'm so sorry to hear you lost this special guy! If your pen is not covered to keep owls and hawks out, it would be a good thing to do. Our poultry are an easy dinner for a lot of different wild critters. I worry when one of my turkey hens roosts on top of a structure in their pen, instead of the roost pole. It is too close to the top and I worry an owl could possibly strike through the chicken wire and get her head.

I am being bombarded right now with a family of raccoons visiting nightly...making all kinds of loud noise and screaming. The prints go right up to the doors of both the coop and pen. They are checking to make sure I've closed them.

I asked on a chicken forum what I could bait a trap with that wouldn't draw cats...did catch one cat a few nights ago. Found out that raccoons like sweets...the one in the trap right now went for frosting. I was out last night shooting the garden hose at the group trying to get them to leave and my son was trying to pick them off with the pellet gun. One thing is for sure...if I don't get rid of them, they will figure out how to tear through the chicken wire and get either the chickens or the turkeys.