Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
If you have chickens or goats or rabbits or any farm animals, it's your job to protect them from predators. Predators will often take 2nd best if they can't get into the chicken coop to enjoy chicken. 2nd best in this case was finding a galvanized trash can storing chicken feed that has been weakened from rust inside to out. When I first saw the tiny hole I thought I had punctured it since I just filled it with 40 lbs of feed the day before so I covered it with gorilla tape around its circumference. But the next day, the tape was clawed or chewed off and the hole was much larger. Whatever it was also robbed about 20 lbs or 5-7 days of food. So I had to take care of this money pit quickly. It could be any number of predators because raccoons, opossums, weasels, beavers, fox, coyote, among others are all in this area. From experience, I've found it best to identify what it is before doing anything. As an example, had I set a live trap and the predator was a weasel, I would never catch it at a cost of $7 per day in the feed lost. Because once a predator identifies an easy meal, they never stop coming back for more (it doesn't matter if its live animals or feed, they will return until its all gone and for several days after that in case it gets replaced).
So this video shows you how I positively identified it, set the appropriate trap for the animal along with appropriate bait on day 2, and by day 3 already reducing the problem without any food loss or chickens killed. But as you can tell from the video, it's going to take a few nights to fix completely.
Some people without experience might be wondering, what kind of traps do you use for various animals and predators and this is what I use:
chipmunk: rat trap with just enough peanut butter on the trigger to hold a single sunflower seed, i buy them in 12 packs because its cheaper amzn.to/3Ib60EO I also tested these, they worked but didn't work well enough to justify the costs since they are 1000% higher per trap than a standard rat trap $2 vs $20 amzn.to/4etzQAt
squirrels: shoot them on sight using pellet gun (there was a video but can't find it, probably got deleted by YT) - ultra quick neighbors won't hear 22 pellet gun amzn.to/3Gr23LO
opossums: medium 32" live trap with a metal wire in front of the trigger and 1 or 2 honeybuns strung through the wire amzn.to/44cPi0A or I prefer the ones with the steel doors instead of wire doors amzn.to/46p69P3
raccoons: 32" live trap with a bowl attached to a metal wire in front of the trigger filled with any kind of food or in this case chicken feed since thats what they were interested in - sometimes this will work but most times it don't youtube.com/watch?v=b1o9z9DXl2s and trap amzn.to/46p69P3 for the bowl I just use an old butter bowl or similar small bowl and use wire/metal clothes-hanger to attach it to the trap.
snakes: remove on sight youtube.com/watch?v=f1HeqpCM0Ng
red-tailed hawks: these are a protected species and can not be trapped or killed, call your wildlife conservation officer if you have problems with them killing chickens or other small animals youtube.com/watch?v=UvV-FQ4c6AY
deer: if I catch them in the garden or orchard, I shoot them with a low powered bb gun - doesn't injure them but hurts them enough to learn not to go there. I have had some decent results with sound devices for animals/predators - they detect movement, then play a sound out of the frequency of human hearing but most animals don't like them (only effective in garden or orchard perimeters) I own 8 of these, 4 around garden parameter and 4 around orchard parameter - it won't stop them but reduces damage: amzn.to/3GtB0PX
weasels: this requires a special kind of trap, look up weasel traps online but you basically need a small 110 conibear trap, burn that trap when new in a fire, then build a wooden box ... think of a live trap how it has 6 sides ... build a wooden box with 5 sides made of wood and the 6th side is the entrance containing your trap then use fat from steak of similar attached to a wire on the other small end (I drill a hole so i can fish electric fence wire through it, attach the fat to one end, then pull the wire back so there is no slack inside the box ... that forces the weasel to attempt to go all the way in to get to the fat). In a pinch, I have used a small live trap with the door wired open, covered on the 5 wooden sides with cardboard, created a 6th cardboard side with a small 2-3" opening right above the conibear trigger and hotmelt glued the cardboard only using 2 drops along the top of the trap to cardboard, set the trap in place, wired the trap to the open end of the small live trap. youtube.com/watch?v=tbX8jo1Ekqs and for the conibear trap, I usually buy these in bulk from a trapping supply company but amazon has them too amzn.to/4lzo75R
If you have chickens or goats or rabbits or any farm animals, it's your job to protect them from predators. Predators will often take 2nd best if they can't get into the chicken coop to enjoy chicken. 2nd best in this case was finding a galvanized trash can storing chicken feed that has been weakened from rust inside to out. When I first saw the tiny hole I thought I had punctured it since I just filled it with 40 lbs of feed the day before so I covered it with gorilla tape around its circumference. But the next day, the tape was clawed or chewed off and the hole was much larger. Whatever it was also robbed about 20 lbs or 5-7 days of food. So I had to take care of this money pit quickly. It could be any number of predators because raccoons, opossums, weasels, beavers, fox, coyote, among others are all in this area. From experience, I've found it best to identify what it is before doing anything. As an example, had I set a live trap and the predator was a weasel, I would never catch it at a cost of $7 per day in the feed lost. Because once a predator identifies an easy meal, they never stop coming back for more (it doesn't matter if its live animals or feed, they will return until its all gone and for several days after that in case it gets replaced).
So this video shows you how I positively identified it, set the appropriate trap for the animal along with appropriate bait on day 2, and by day 3 already reducing the problem without any food loss or chickens killed. But as you can tell from the video, it's going to take a few nights to fix completely.
Some people without experience might be wondering, what kind of traps do you use for various animals and predators and this is what I use:
chipmunk: rat trap with just enough peanut butter on the trigger to hold a single sunflower seed, i buy them in 12 packs because its cheaper amzn.to/3Ib60EO I also tested these, they worked but didn't work well enough to justify the costs since they are 1000% higher per trap than a standard rat trap $2 vs $20 amzn.to/4etzQAt
squirrels: shoot them on sight using pellet gun (there was a video but can't find it, probably got deleted by YT) - ultra quick neighbors won't hear 22 pellet gun amzn.to/3Gr23LO
opossums: medium 32" live trap with a metal wire in front of the trigger and 1 or 2 honeybuns strung through the wire amzn.to/44cPi0A or I prefer the ones with the steel doors instead of wire doors amzn.to/46p69P3
raccoons: 32" live trap with a bowl attached to a metal wire in front of the trigger filled with any kind of food or in this case chicken feed since thats what they were interested in - sometimes this will work but most times it don't youtube.com/watch?v=b1o9z9DXl2s and trap amzn.to/46p69P3 for the bowl I just use an old butter bowl or similar small bowl and use wire/metal clothes-hanger to attach it to the trap.
snakes: remove on sight youtube.com/watch?v=f1HeqpCM0Ng
red-tailed hawks: these are a protected species and can not be trapped or killed, call your wildlife conservation officer if you have problems with them killing chickens or other small animals youtube.com/watch?v=UvV-FQ4c6AY
deer: if I catch them in the garden or orchard, I shoot them with a low powered bb gun - doesn't injure them but hurts them enough to learn not to go there. I have had some decent results with sound devices for animals/predators - they detect movement, then play a sound out of the frequency of human hearing but most animals don't like them (only effective in garden or orchard perimeters) I own 8 of these, 4 around garden parameter and 4 around orchard parameter - it won't stop them but reduces damage: amzn.to/3GtB0PX
weasels: this requires a special kind of trap, look up weasel traps online but you basically need a small 110 conibear trap, burn that trap when new in a fire, then build a wooden box ... think of a live trap how it has 6 sides ... build a wooden box with 5 sides made of wood and the 6th side is the entrance containing your trap then use fat from steak of similar attached to a wire on the other small end (I drill a hole so i can fish electric fence wire through it, attach the fat to one end, then pull the wire back so there is no slack inside the box ... that forces the weasel to attempt to go all the way in to get to the fat). In a pinch, I have used a small live trap with the door wired open, covered on the 5 wooden sides with cardboard, created a 6th cardboard side with a small 2-3" opening right above the conibear trigger and hotmelt glued the cardboard only using 2 drops along the top of the trap to cardboard, set the trap in place, wired the trap to the open end of the small live trap. youtube.com/watch?v=tbX8jo1Ekqs and for the conibear trap, I usually buy these in bulk from a trapping supply company but amazon has them too amzn.to/4lzo75R
