I'm in Minnesota so i don't think it could be buzzards, but I'll look up worf rats.
Today there was a huge, huge bird very close to the coops and chicken yard and it totally freaked out my flock. They were making a racket like I'd never heard and they were all trying to hide behind the coops...
Good idea about the radio and dog hair. I'll try those to see if it helps. We've been lucky so far, a year and a half with nothing so this was a bit of a shock! Now I'm afraid they'll be back since they know where the "food" is.
I don't think it would be dogs, we don't have any in our neighborhood that would have done this, and I don't think a dog would eat a chicken like that. Maybe racoons. I guess the weird part is that it was almost certainly daylight, multiple birds and the way that one was eaten. What would focus...
Sometime today from approximately 5ish to just about when it got dark around 8:30, we had our first attack and it was a pretty big one. I have to look again in the morning but Im pretty sure we lost 4, maybe 5 birds, but only 1 was found. The one we found was right next to the chicken yard that...