Bantam fatalitie

[orpington123]

Hi my name is Bobby. I had an incident today in which I’m am pretty sure of the answer but want some opinions. !!i have three pens of hens over in Ireland here. They’re is a pen of bantams with 2 silkies a Japanese hen and a Japanese roo which are related and are quite small. They’re is also a Irish ganefowl chick. There is two other pens one with rirs and one with a Sussex roo and hen and two battery hens. I went down today to find the corpse of my Japanese roo dead and half eaten in the Sussex /battery hen pen. They all had some blood around their beak but especially the roo and some on their breast’s (more noticeable on the Sussex’s white feathers) Any opinions ?? Ps. All the rest of the bantams were five on there own pen and note that there is a 2 meter high green mesh fence all around with no roof over the top and all pens are connected with these fences with a chicken coop in each one. Thanks in advance

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Sounds like you had a predator attack, unless I'm missing something.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[rebrascora]

Did this happen during the day? In other words, do you lock them in their individual coops at night? If it happened through the day, I would guess that your Japanese roo hopped the fence and bit off more than he could chew with the sussex roo.... are those pens adjacent? Once blood is drawn, it is not unusual for hens to enjoy a meat feast.... cannibalism is acceptable in the chicken world... it's just a free meal and they seldom get the chance to eat real meat. Yes it is possible a predator killed and dragged his carcass into an adjoining pen but I would have expected that predator to kill birds in that pen too.