What killed my chickens?

[Howard E]

A bit more on weasels........formidable killers they are. Along with owls, hawks and snakes, one of natures most effective rodent controllers and all around bad ***.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel

Google your state's DNR and weasel and most will likely have a page for them. This one was from Illinois. Most will have something similar.

https://www.dnr.illinois.gov/conservation/wildlife/Pages/LongTailedWeasel.aspx

So the nature of how they kill is to rush and attack the prey, and bite it on the back of the neck, killing it instantly. The reason for missing heads and no blood is they lick or lap at the blood. Ripping the head off a chicken would make it bleed more, and especially so if it still has a heart beat. They also go into a killing frenzy, so don't just stop at one. They may kill everything in sight, even if they are not hungry. So they just kill one after the other and move on. They say that given a choice, they feed almost exclusively on rats, mice and other small furry rodents. Take out "almost" and they would be welcome almost everywhere.

It is possible they are not really after the birds.....or at least not initially. It may be they initially were attracted to the coop for any mice or rats lurking about, but then find the birds and being the opportunistic killers they are, go for the birds instead. Since birds are easy prey, and since weasels do not have a large hunting area, they tend to come back to the scene of the crime for another easy meal. They also eat eggs, so that may be another reason for them to keep coming back to a chicken house.

They live in tunnels and burrows, so they can dig and it does not take much digging for them to get under a fence or coop. They can get through holes no larger than an inch or so. So the solution is to employ the apron trick around the perimeter........probably no larger than 1/2" x 1" welded wire, and 1/2" hardware cloth over all vent openings. No cracks or other openings anywhere.

If they stick around and won't go away, best way to get rid of them is a weasel box trap........a box with a hole in one end, and a rat trap waiting for them inside.

 

[Barnas Barnyrd]

Thank you for all of the information. I have had chickens for 7 years and never experienced any predator issues until this year. My neighborhood has been plagued by eagles, foxes, opossums, raccoons and now weasels.

 

[shortgrass]

Ugh, they're horrible! And they stink, too! Literally, they smell horrible; they spray like a skunk but its not as strong as a skunk. It has a strong cat urine and dead thing odor...ugh


I actually encourage and feed the opossums. They have never went after any birds, although they will eat untended eggs left laying around, or help themselves to the egg basket you forgot to take in

I noticed when I had opossums, that the weasel left and hasn't been back...yet. We also seem to have had a drop in coons since we started feeding the opossums. My cat wasn't too thrilled to share her food bowl though.

Either way, I'd take all of those over a sneaky weasel any day. Even the dog couldn't do a thing about that weasel.

 

[bobbi-j]

Weasels come in different sizes, too. We have a larger one and smaller one here. They sure don't need much of a space to get into the coop, either. My experience has been with them making a puncture in the neck or under the wings. The first time it happened, I thought they'd all dropped dead until DH showed me the little "vampire marks". We had city visitors one time. They wanted to see chickens as they had NEVER been on a farm before (a woman in her 50's - it kind of blew me away). Anyway, we walked out to the coop, I opened the door to find a coop full of dead 6-week old chickens(killed by a weasel)! Welcome to life on the farm....

 

[joeh]

Found all six of my seven hens dead. seventh was missing. a couple had heads chewed up the rest no immediate sign of what killed them. I removed five from the area and used the sixth for bait in a box trap I use for ground hog and raccoon. Found a mink in the trap in the morning.