3 chicks disappeared at once?!

[Flock Leader]

You ever noticed that with regular chickens (not store bought house pet type) that when you or an animal enters the pen the young hens naturally shy away and avoid contact and it's the young inquisitive roosters that come foward to greet you and check it out? When they do that to a predator they haven't yet experienced as a threat it leads to their early demise.
My chickens don't see cats as threats and allowed a rogue cat to kill 15 of my young birds this summer. Started out 1 per week, then 1 every 2 days, sometimes 2 per night, then 4 one night, then I caught the cat in the act during broad daylight 10 feet away and shot it. Hatched 50 more chicks since then with 0 loss and haven't had to shoot any more of my cats either.

Yes, actually when in doubt about a bird's sex I observe its behavior - cockerels act "cocky", pullets are more reserved.

Did the preying cat leave any traces? I haven't seen so much as a feather of all my birds who had gone missing.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

No trace was left of the fuzzy bittys. Of the ones that were partially & almost fully feathered out I found a few large feathers where the cat took the bird to eat it, a few wingtips in the barn where the cats hang out, a few legs & wing tips in the front yard, a complete body in a side pen that vanished the next night, a head over here, a pile of feathers there. Seems that the bigger the bird, the more inedible parts that were left. And the same cat was always lingering at the scene.
That's why I was perplexed at first and as the attacks escalated it became clear who the predator was.