A Cheyenne-area man got so fed up with marauding raccoons decapitating and mutilating his chickens, he sank roughly $1,300 and hours of labor into building a “chicken fortress,” which he dares the masked bandits to try breaching.
“Nope, I’m not messing around anymore. We’re going full-throttle,” Kevin Gunter told Cowboy State Daily.
Over the course of a few weeks, a raccoon — or multiple raccoons — killed eight of his 13 chickens.
In most cases, he and his family found the mangled remains in a nearby pasture with “the head gone and the guts gone,” he said.
To keep any more of his poultry from suffering such a horrific fate, Gunter declared, “I’m building a chicken fortress."
He’s dubbed it “The Henitentiary.”
It has a sturdy metal roof and a solid wooden frame that incorporates railroad ties.
He’s also buried industrial-strength steel cloth on the perimeter to keep bloodthirsty trash pandas from digging their way in.
“Imagine a window screen, but super-thick, 19 millimeters thick,” he said.
“I kind of hope there’s at least one raccoon that tries to get in just so I can watch it try to claw that stuff underneath,” he added.
Fed up with raccoons killing his chickens, Cheyenne-area resident Kevin Gunter hardened his birds’ outside roost. (Courtesy Kevin Gunter) 
Fed up with raccoons killing his chickens, Cheyenne-area resident Kevin Gunter built a “chicken fortress,” which he dubbed “The Henitentiary." (Courtesy Kevin Gunter) 
Fed up with raccoons killing his chickens, Cheyenne-area resident Kevin Gunter built a “chicken fortress,” which he dubbed “The Henitentiary." (Courtesy Kevin Gunter) 
Fed up with raccoons killing his chickens, Cheyenne-area resident Kevin Gunter built a “chicken fortress,” which he dubbed “The Henitentiary." (Courtesy Kevin Gunter)
The Killing Spree Begins
Gunter, a Navy veteran, moved to Cheyenne about a decade ago. He started raising backyard chickens when he still lived in the city limits.
He expanded his flock when he moved out of town a few years ago. The family takes its share of the eggs, and Gunter’s wife donates the rest to the needy.
His family suffered their first chicken causality about three weeks ago.
Gunter said his son went out to check on the chicken one day and came back inside the house looking perplexed.
“He said, ‘I think we lost a chicken,’” Gunter said.
“I asked him how the chicken got lost and he said, ‘No, it’s dead. It’s dead,’” he added.
Gunter stepped outside and found the ghastly carcass, still in the coop.
“All of the other chickens were just kind of standing around, staring at it,” he said.
At first, Gunter thought a fox might be to blame and hoped it was a one-time incident.
Several more dead chickens prompted him to reach out to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. After hearing his description of the carcasses, they told him it was almost certainly the work of raccoons.
‘He’s Scared Of Everything Now’
Gunter’s two roosters were among the victims: one slaughtered, the other mentally scarred.
“A raccoon got my biggest rooster. I don’t know how that even happened,” he said. “My other rooster, he’s turned into a sucker. He’s scared of everything now.”
He said the chicken fortress is nearly completed after he and his son put about a week’s work into it.
The hardest part was installing the roof panels in windy weather.
“In the wind a 12-foot-long roof panel is like a frickin' sail,” he said.
Gunter has ordered more chicks, which he expects to arrive on April 20.
They can’t be intermixed with the adult chickens right away, because chickens can be brutal establishing a “pecking order” with newcomers, he said.
The chicks will be in a separate area, hemmed in and protected by railroad ties. For their own safety, the chickens won’t be as free as they used to be.
“I used to let them free-range all the time,” Gunter said. "But I’ll start putting them away at night. I’ll corral them at night in the chicken fortress because I don’t want to lose them."
‘They’re Mean’
Rock Springs animal control officer Lydia Gomez told Cowboy State Daily that her department has been answering numerous raccoon calls lately.
It might be because dry weather has pushed them into town to seek new food sources.
Rock Springs only just legalized keeping chickens within the city limits, Gomez said. So far, there haven’t been many complaints about raccoons raiding chicken coops, but that could change.
“It will be interesting to see if we start getting more of those, as raising backyard chickens gets more and more popular in Rock Springs,” she said.
Gomez said she keeps her own chicken coop “locked up like Fort Knox” because she knows how good raccoons can be at breaking into things.
She advised residents to make sure that chicken coops, pet food and other raccoon temptations are locked up tight.
“They can lift things, pry at things, open things,” Gomez said. "Because of their little finders, they’re able to do more than other animals."
Gomez said she reminds Rock Springs residents to “make sure your animals are vaccinated for rabies” because raccoons are known carriers of the disease.
Raccoons are some of the toughest animals her department must deal with.
“They look cute and you see all of these cute videos about them, but they’re mean,” she said.
She recalled trying to save a raccoon that was stuck in a dumpster by securing it with a catch pole with a neck loop at the end.
“It actually grabbed my catch pole and shook it at me, screaming,” she said.
In another instance, in an apparent act of defiance, a raccoon clambered on top of an animal control vehicle and flopped down on the roof right next to the sign reading “control.”
“That was just mean,” Gomez said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
