What is killing my hens?

[NEChickenNoob]

An Owl will kill like that.... but a guinea is a big kill so you may have one BIG owl.

Where is this at? If an Owl that big, probably a Great Horned Owl if within their natural range. They will kill other owls even. They are kinda like the Bald Eagle of Owls.

 

[pine knoll farm]

We are located in northern West Virginia.
The carcass of the guinea was found out in the open.
Could this possibly be a cat or bobcat?
The other guinea are still missing, with no trace???

 

[pine knoll farm]

LL the meat was gone!
I believe it happened at night....

 

[Mehjr10]

Usually a fox will snatch and stash and snatch again and will not leave much sign. They will then carry back to the den.. The one found in the field sounds like a bird of prey kill, Falcon, Hawk, Owl etc.

 

[NEChickenNoob]

Your definitely in Great Horned Owl territory. But it's very hard to determine a predator based off of the kill site alone. There are always exceptions to the rule. Predators learn how to hunt from trial and error and in some species from mom and dad. They can develop non-typical methods that work in the environment they have been presented with. To really understand the kill site, you would have to look at the body of the animal and determine what his tools were for eating and how he did it. This is still not fool-proof. It really takes some significant skill to accurately determine these things.

 

[pine knoll farm]

Thank you, that was very informative!!

 

[lollipopguild]

Predators are very frustrating. I had a problem over the winter with something getting into the coop and killing 1 bird every day or two. Wiped my flock from ~17 down to 4. Restocked some laying hens to bring me up to 11. Decided to get more pullets and ended up with roughly 50 birds. I've had about 38 birds go missing/killed in the past 2.5 weeks. Set up a live trap and caught a coon. Still hasn't helped. Whatever it was scared the chickens away from the coop so they were roosting all over the property and I couldn't find them at night, so it's been a vicious cycle. Some birds were found dead with their neck ate or head gone, others are just gone, others were just feet left behind, others were just wings left behind.

 

[Judy P-E]

This past winter, we had a fox taking our hens. We were away and let them go in and out of their coop on their own. Bad idea. Once we locked them up at night all is well. Every year something gets a few.

 

[a1sassygal]

We had all chickens dead on Monday morn when I went to feed. Only one hen missing.they
Looked like they died from a heart attack. No necks broke or claw marks. We have two coops side by side. They're weren't even feathers in the coup or henhouse.the other coop had feathers in the henhouse and on the ground but no trauma to the hens.any ideas?

 

[bobbi-j]

My guess would be weasel. They will bite the neck or under the wing and lap up the blood from the chicken. I had one wipe out over a dozen young ones that way. The only mark on them were the little fang marks.