Hello Everyone!
I'm new here, and am in desperate search for some information. I have had chickens for 2 years now, and even though we live in the woods and fields of Northern Michigan, my chickens have always been safe. We let them free range during the day and lock them in at night. We have a big coop for the layers, and a small coop for the babies, since we get meat birds and some additional layers each year.
Two days ago, we built a small coop for our turkey poults, which are about 4 weeks old. It is an 8x10 structure, 4 feet high, with a peaked roof. The roof is covered with a heavy tarp which is tied to the sides, and the sides of the coop are covered in 1x2 fencing with hardware cloth around the bottom 2 feet. On the ends of the roof, there is a hole approximately 6 inches square where we ran out of materials. The hole is at the top of the peak.
This morning, I woke up to 8 missing turkeys (3 of them Giant Whites), and the rest wandering in the yard. The fencing on the side had not been disturbed, there was no stretching of the fence, no digging under the structure, no footprints of any kind, and only a handful of feathers. There was a little blood on the bottom of the fence, but not even enough to represent one poult. Based on the fact that the 3 Giants would in no way be able to get through the fence or under the structure, I'm assuming this is something that flew or crawled in the hole, but I don't know how it would get itself plus the bodies out--not to mention 8 times!! There are no bodies or body parts anywhere, and it's a mystery to how the surviving ones got out as well. Not to mention our blue heeler made no noise whatsoever.
Anyone else ever had a mystery like this? I'll be filling in the gaps and adding more hardware cloth today, but I'm stumped as to what did this??
Thanks for any feedback!
I'm new here, and am in desperate search for some information. I have had chickens for 2 years now, and even though we live in the woods and fields of Northern Michigan, my chickens have always been safe. We let them free range during the day and lock them in at night. We have a big coop for the layers, and a small coop for the babies, since we get meat birds and some additional layers each year.
Two days ago, we built a small coop for our turkey poults, which are about 4 weeks old. It is an 8x10 structure, 4 feet high, with a peaked roof. The roof is covered with a heavy tarp which is tied to the sides, and the sides of the coop are covered in 1x2 fencing with hardware cloth around the bottom 2 feet. On the ends of the roof, there is a hole approximately 6 inches square where we ran out of materials. The hole is at the top of the peak.
This morning, I woke up to 8 missing turkeys (3 of them Giant Whites), and the rest wandering in the yard. The fencing on the side had not been disturbed, there was no stretching of the fence, no digging under the structure, no footprints of any kind, and only a handful of feathers. There was a little blood on the bottom of the fence, but not even enough to represent one poult. Based on the fact that the 3 Giants would in no way be able to get through the fence or under the structure, I'm assuming this is something that flew or crawled in the hole, but I don't know how it would get itself plus the bodies out--not to mention 8 times!! There are no bodies or body parts anywhere, and it's a mystery to how the surviving ones got out as well. Not to mention our blue heeler made no noise whatsoever.
Anyone else ever had a mystery like this? I'll be filling in the gaps and adding more hardware cloth today, but I'm stumped as to what did this??
Thanks for any feedback!
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