What would attack a chicken and leave a pile of feathers like this?

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IridescentPals said:
We heard, but did not see a commotion below the barn. The hens all came running to us gabbling. We counted heads and all were accounted for, but


one of the Golden Laced Wyandottes had some stray feathers. This is a photo of one of the two places were we discovered feathers. These were near where they take their dust baths. If a cat had pounced on her and she shook it off close to the barn would the attack leave two distinct areas of feather loss? Poor girl. We were observing for awhile afterward and saw one of our goats reach down and pull a few feathers from the back of our other Golden Laced Wyandotte. It's hard to imagine that the goat would pull feathers in that quantity, but I don't know what to think (except I am considering rehoming the goat!)

Any suggestions? Thank you!
Click to expand...
I once had a goat whose main goal in life was to make sure one of my horses never had a full tail.
 
I once had a dog who'd just had a litter of pups in an outdoor run, away from the house. The run had a concrete base, with 1x2" welded wire sides and a chain link gate. The dog box sat outside the run. I discovered a pup missing one day, and momma in the box with the rest of the litter, sporting a scratch on her nose. Only trace I ever found of the missing pup was a couple spots of blood & a small piece of bone.

There was no roof on the run, so whatever got the pup had to have come from above, or climbed the wire. Never did determine exactly what had happened, but I've always suspected that whatever grabbed the pup sat right there & consumed at least part of it (why else would there be part of a bone left behind?) while momma protected the rest of the litter, getting her nose scratched in the process. Hawk? Quite possibly. Fox? Possible, but not likely. Bobcat? I've heard of it happening.
 
In our case, the goat never repeated the action and a hawk was the culprit. Since then we've had a couple of similar attacks from the air, but thankfully no chickens have been truly harmed.
 
Gosh, one of my favorite hens got taken last night, i spent about 3 hours searching, in case she had gotten lost. The next morning, i found a trail of feathers, i followed it and it lead to behind the bush where there was a huge scuttle of feathers and nothing else. I did another hour of searching, but that was it. I am suspecting it was a fox, but the neighbor has a pretty big cat that might not be too scared of a hen... Any ideas? I am expecting that it was a fox and i am also hoping to catch it, cause no one messes with my precious chickys. I might have a nice new furry fox hat by the end of the month...
 

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