OK, here’s a piece of advice for new chicken owners: inspect your coop on a regular basis. Check the structure for holes, rot, rust — any way a predator could get in.

One awful summer I faced flock carnage.  I couldn’t figure out how my chickens were being slaughtered in the evenings, locked up in their coop. This went on for three nights and I was starting to panic as the body count mounted up. I was about 8 months pregnant – I hauled my gigantic body on top of the coop to discover hundreds of little muddy raccoon hand prints, and a corner of chicken wire that had been peeled away as an entrance. Grrrr.

When your chicken wire starts to get rusty, weak, or bent out of shape, it’s a good idea to peel it off and slap on a fresh batch. My sweet husband spent the weekend doing this for me, check out how nice it looks! The original wire lasted almost 3 years, but I was about a year overdue on this update.

This blog generally discusses ways to thwart predators like red-tailed hawks. But, who can resist babies? The Cornell Lab of Ornithology created a live webcam, featuring Big Red and Ezra.

As of yesterday:

We’re thrilled to share the news that two eggs have begun to hatch in the nest of Big Red and Ezra, the Red-tailed Hawks featured on our live cam streaming from the Cornell campus. Thousands of viewers yesterday saw the first glimpse of a tiny beak visible through a hole in the egg as Big Red looked on. Viewers also spotted a small hole in a second egg. The third egg is due to hatch within a few days.

Please join us to watch as life unfolds at the nest! We hope you will forward this message to share with friends and family. Thanks!

The great chicken nemesis, the opossum, found a way into the coop this evening. Fortunately for my ladies, she was a very young predator. She did manage to frighten my birds into a cackling frenzy, chasing them off their perch and into the run. Scott found her, desperately clutching the wire at the top of the run, trying to find a way out. My years volunteering for a wildlife rehab prepped me for opossum removal (although she was fast and wiggly and I lost her on the first grab). I finally got her, and set her free.

Opossums eat chickens. We’ll have to review the coop in the daylight tomorrow to find the breach. In the meantime, I locked the door to the roosting area. Unfortunately, the opossum will return, and she’ll quadruple in size.

I can hear my hens squawking from their coop. Josie had a very close call with a sharp-shinned hawk this morning. I was standing about five feet away when it landed on her back! It bailed on the chicken-breakfast-project quickly, probably because I was there. SSH’s are quite small, so I am not sure it could have carried her off. Josie didn’t seem to know what was happening, just let out a “WTF?” squawk and made her way back into the coop. I need to check her back for injuries today, just as soon as I finish hosting my next webinar. Ah, life in the burbs.

Well, it had to happen at some point. Our poor house sitter went outside to find Jessica prone, headless, and mangled in the coop. Interesting that predators are so consistent – they always eat the chicken head first. They also generally eat the nether regions but I didn’t want to subject the house sitter to that type of cadaver inspection.

The other ladies are a bit rattled, but otherwise OK. Egg production is down, but picking up again. We found a small breach at the base of the coop, a place where a single strand of wire had rusted out. We can’t tell what happened for sure, but Jessica may have had her head stuck outside, or something small and agile may have come in. It’s tough to be a chicken.

For any of you who don’t know me, I am not heartless. I am sad she died, but if you keep chickens you have to put up a barrier, a clinical approach to death. They are my pets, but they die frequently and in unpleasant, messy ways. I’ve had exactly one chicken die of old age, poor old Larry, who was actually senile.

Silver linings: I only lost one. The others will benefit from more run space. She lived a relatively long chicken life. I found the hole and patched it.