- Jun 18, 2014
- 10
- 0
- 22
greetings, new member here, just finished reading several posts and semi-definitive articles about predator "calling cards".
i live in a residential area in western PA, on one acre with roughly a 1/4 acre pond. we have 7 ducks--3 pekins and 4 rouens, and they're all pretty big-- that we got spring of 2013. we do not live near any dense woods areas, but there are some semi-woodsy-sections. the pond and surrounding areas are fenced in, but not airtight. definitely nothing like some of the hardcore things i read about on this forum. our ducks occasionally find a small breach under the fence somewhere and leave the fenced in area... then eventually re-enter. and each time, i try and repair the "breach".
we have a 5x5 duckhouse...but they never go in. even this past winter, when the pond was 90% frozen over and temps hit between 15 and 20 below, they chose to stay in the unfrozen area of the pond by the springs. they didn't seem to care about the weather whatsoever.
we've gotten plenty of eggs...sometimes coons beat us to them. but coons and groundhogs are about the only other animals i have ever seen here. i have seen coons eating the duck food, and the ducks actually chase them away, on numerous occasions.
anyway, this morning we could find our most prolific laying female, and the only one that doesn't seem to fight being held by my 3 kids... she was about 15 feet from the fence, in our yard, laying roughly how she would be positioned if she were on a nest... but some had been eaten out of her body cavity, some intestines were nearby, and the long neck was outstretched flat and completely bare down to what looked like dark red meat/muscle (?) head and most other feathers were intact. two different good sized clusters of shorter feathers were within 20 feet. my kids found her in their normal morning feeding time. they have been bawling all day. is this a coon? seems like every other posts i read about them talk about the head missing.
other than "go spend $10,000 and 3 weeks vacation building a large pen and new fencing"... any thoughts or recommendations?
i live in a residential area in western PA, on one acre with roughly a 1/4 acre pond. we have 7 ducks--3 pekins and 4 rouens, and they're all pretty big-- that we got spring of 2013. we do not live near any dense woods areas, but there are some semi-woodsy-sections. the pond and surrounding areas are fenced in, but not airtight. definitely nothing like some of the hardcore things i read about on this forum. our ducks occasionally find a small breach under the fence somewhere and leave the fenced in area... then eventually re-enter. and each time, i try and repair the "breach".
we have a 5x5 duckhouse...but they never go in. even this past winter, when the pond was 90% frozen over and temps hit between 15 and 20 below, they chose to stay in the unfrozen area of the pond by the springs. they didn't seem to care about the weather whatsoever.
we've gotten plenty of eggs...sometimes coons beat us to them. but coons and groundhogs are about the only other animals i have ever seen here. i have seen coons eating the duck food, and the ducks actually chase them away, on numerous occasions.
anyway, this morning we could find our most prolific laying female, and the only one that doesn't seem to fight being held by my 3 kids... she was about 15 feet from the fence, in our yard, laying roughly how she would be positioned if she were on a nest... but some had been eaten out of her body cavity, some intestines were nearby, and the long neck was outstretched flat and completely bare down to what looked like dark red meat/muscle (?) head and most other feathers were intact. two different good sized clusters of shorter feathers were within 20 feet. my kids found her in their normal morning feeding time. they have been bawling all day. is this a coon? seems like every other posts i read about them talk about the head missing.
other than "go spend $10,000 and 3 weeks vacation building a large pen and new fencing"... any thoughts or recommendations?
