As part of my flock, I had 2 male Pekin ducks. They were kept in a separate fenced in area (within the main fence) as they would try and mate with my chickens a lot. My chickens and geese are in coops at night, and we were working on getting a coop for the ducks as well. I've not had any real predator problems since putting everyone in the fence years ago. But last night, it happened. Something got one of my ducks.
I went out this morning and looked around for any trace left behind, or even a body for that matter. there wasn't any real trail of feathers or anything that I've seen before with a lot of past predator attacks prior to fencing everyone in. I did find his body though, at the back of their fence. Looks like whatever it was had him pinned up against the fence and got him there. The other duck has no injuries.
I'm going to rule out weasel/mink/fisher cat, as this isn't really their style of killing (at least, not from my experience). I don't think this was any sort of canine either, as there would have definitely been obvious signs and tracks in there where he was killed. I'm leaning towards opossum or raccoon. Though I've never once had any opossums attack any of my animals before, but hey there's a first time for everything I guess.
Here's some photos of the body, and of some prints I found. I know some of the prints are opossum, but some of the others don't really look like opossum prints.. What do you guys think?
I went out this morning and looked around for any trace left behind, or even a body for that matter. there wasn't any real trail of feathers or anything that I've seen before with a lot of past predator attacks prior to fencing everyone in. I did find his body though, at the back of their fence. Looks like whatever it was had him pinned up against the fence and got him there. The other duck has no injuries.
I'm going to rule out weasel/mink/fisher cat, as this isn't really their style of killing (at least, not from my experience). I don't think this was any sort of canine either, as there would have definitely been obvious signs and tracks in there where he was killed. I'm leaning towards opossum or raccoon. Though I've never once had any opossums attack any of my animals before, but hey there's a first time for everything I guess.
Here's some photos of the body, and of some prints I found. I know some of the prints are opossum, but some of the others don't really look like opossum prints.. What do you guys think?
