How to Build a Raccoon Proof Nearly Automatic Safe Chicken House

How to Build a Raccoon Proof Nearly Automatic Safe Chicken House Lex Loeb Contributor Network Two thing to Keep in mind: Raccoons can't Jump and Raccoons can't fly.... Chickens are mostly vulnerable to predators at night when the roost and sleep. If you ever want to catch a chicken the time to do it is at night when it is sleeping. Chickens are completely defenseless when they go into their suspended animation of sleep. That is precisely when Raccoons go after them. Many predators can not reach the chickens up on a pole or a suspended roost or even up on a tree branch but raccoons know how to climb poles and they know how to climb walls and they know how to climb down ropes if you think you can protect your birds by suspending their roosts from a ceiling. suspended roosts far enough off the ground toward the middle of the ceiling is one way to prevent the raccoons from getting to your sleeping chickens. It is possible to have a pulley hoist for laying boxes too so you can be sure the laying boxes are off the ground where raccoons can't get to the eggs. Most raccoon evil action is nocturnal. Having a chicken house big enough to have a ceiling far in enough to keep the raccoons away not a luxury for urban chickens as pets. Raccoons can not easily get though chicken wire cages, but they can and do on occasions. Building a typical chicken wire wood cage for your chickens makes it necessary to lock them in at night and to let them out by day as having chickens free range is the idea. Making chicken care as automatic as possible is the best way to keep chickens and not have to spend too much time supervising them or protecting them from predators. Setting up automatic water and gravity fed food bins makes having chickens easy until the raccoons show up and ruin things.