so this is my chicken coop and look what's hunting around it a north american mink
makes our aquatic and this one seemed to have a trail
coming from our pond area and it's trying to get into this chicken coop
now my wife went out yesterday and found chickens with their heads taken off some were eaten clean
others had the back of their head just chewed open which is one of the traits that you've been raided
by a mink if you notice in the opening there he jumps headlong into the wall as if he expected to
go through it and that's because i found a small hole there where he tore apart the rotted wood
but i foiled him i fixed it today so he thought coming back at night and they're
largely sight hunters their sense of smell isn't that great their sense of hearing is pretty decent
he went and jumped right at the wall expecting to go right back inside the chicken coop the way
he had before but now he found a fresh piece of wood there so i decided to put up cameras
so i could see and verify that it was in fact a mink here he is on the other side
of the coop jumping up on the chicken swing from the chicken swing he didn't go anywhere
so let's see it in slow motion remember there was a hole that he carved into the side yesterday
which was how he was able to feed on the chickens look at his head bam he's a little bit
shorter after that jump he expected to get right through the hole that he made the night before
so what is the takeaway on this
make sure that your chicken coops are solid if you've got rotted wood it's time to replace it
a mink will come back night after night until it finds its way in so if you've got chickens that
are missing their heads or maybe the back of their head is chewed off you might be raided by a mink
they have a lot of other curious traits this is a male
because these are 8 or 1 by 10 planks on the side here you can see he spans
two of them almost and the males are the largest female somewhat smaller he could be 18 inches long
and nice stout powerful head there strong climbing claws he's trying to get up this rough cut lumber
and so the moral of the story is don't fail your chickens
by leaving openings in rotted wood or small openings in the side of your coop where they could
be raided so i thought i would share this with you quickly just to show what a mink looks like
how strong they are
and explain that if you're missing chicken heads this could be the culprit we have plenty heads
inside i noticed that they were absolutely silent while this rascal was running around
so we decided to make a short video share with you show their agility
show what they do at night see what a make looks like if you've never seen one before
and in some parts of the world they're invasive but here they kill muskrats they do a lot of good
they eat voles they'll eat your poultry of course which is that's your job to protect your chickens
but uh they also eat a lot of things that we don't like to have around
so i hope you enjoyed watching protect your chickens with solid coops
you