Please Help Me Protect My Animals

Hello, my name is John. I am a single parent raising my fourteen-year-old son alone after becoming disabled and a subsequent divorce.

(Here are more images: https://imgur.com/a/lpe1DVL)

He and I moved out here three-and-a-half years ago and of course brought our lovely dogs. Around a year ago, over the course of one month, they all died. They were vomiting and had blood coming out from their nose. The Game Warden said it was poisoning.
The dog that is pictured was shot in the head. He survived but that ordeal gave me three months of vet bills.

 

We started a bit of a farm, too. We started doing this sort of farm to help pay the bills and give us a steady supply of eggs.

It was going well for a while after many months of raising chickens, ducks, and goats. Then the attacks on them started, too.

 

The chickens and ducks were in chicken wire enclosures with a coop and the goats in a hog panel area with luscious grasses and weeds.

 

We moved some chicks outside. A group of fifteen or so Black Copper Marans, Rhode Island Reds, and two varieties of Wyandottes. They were in a six-foot-tall dog kennel. They were gone without a trace. Someone stole them.

I made a report to the Sheriff's Office but was given the "Well, maybe they got out" explanation. I doubt these chicks open the metal door, hopped out, and then shut it behind them.

 

Then the chickens and ducks started dying. They were both poisoned and attacked. He went out to feed one evening and all but five chickens and three ducks were dead. Within the next few days, the rest died. The Pekin mates held out the longest but the hen was very wounded.

 

They were attacked both by people (poisoning) and by the dogs people let run around town in defiance of the city ordinance that has been in place for seventeen years. Section 6 of the ordinance declares the issue an emergency. That was 2004. This is 2021. The issue has only worsened and the current city council just ignores the issue. Last year one dog that was running around came up to the place where the meeting was being held and peed on a council member's tire. We went inside and let them know. They stated "Oh, that's a nice dog." and proceeded to discuss who they thought owned it. The city form asks that you name the owner of the dog at large. The council members can name some and have lived here for decades but yet the issue persists and they neglect the issue while the citizens' animals are killed.

 

I could go on for ages about what the public officials fail to do for the town but the purpose of this isn't to vent or rant about them but to try to help with my and my son's loss of beloved pets.

 

Over the course of the past month or so, the chickens that we received from a friend that were barn chickens died as well. A few days ago we found rooster feathers in our front yard. Only one rooster remained but now he has simply disappeared. He wasn't alone. Roughly fifteen muscovies have also disappeared. Only two remain. We've found evidence of two killed in entirely different spots but nothing close to what having that many slaughtered would leave behind. The muscovies we have in a pen are also a couple short and part of the fence was pushed down where someone has stepped over. This isn't the first time this has happened.

 

So now we have around 20 birds up and gone with no trace. We checked the entirety of our property and a connecting property to only find two spots of remnants.

 

These dogs I spoke of are killing our pets as well as several other individuals' pets. But humans are involved, too. So between people taking them, poisoning them, and them getting attacked, we've lost nearly everything.

 

We would like these donations in order to help us get security cameras so we can see what and who is doing this that we can pass on to law enforcement for them to hopefully do more about this. We also want to fence in the property to keep peoples' dogs out but this won't stop the thieves.

 

These are our pets. Despite common belief chickens and ducks (technically muscovies aren't ducks) are actually very intelligent and highly personable. The drake Muscovy that weighed approximately twenty pounds and has disappeared as well would yank on your pant leg when he wanted food. Another picked up on this behavior, and of course, they all would run up to us for some seed.

 

The high-resolution cameras and DVR will cost approximately $1600. The fencing will cost several thousand due to needing the fencing, tee posts, barbed wire, etc. I will also need to pay a couple of people to help me do it since I am disabled and have pins in my shoulders and bad problems with my hands and feet. I am also on oxygen.

 

Please help us protect the animals we have left.