- Mar 8, 2011
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I had 10 chickens that are free roaming during the day and put themselves to bed at dusk. We lock them in the coop after we do the nightly count of 10. The coop is 10 feet from my barn and they usually stick in or near the barn, playing in the shrubs and whatnot. I let them out at 6:30am like normal. I came home from work to find only 2 hens "in bed" with 8 others MIA. Upon further inspection of the bushes, etc, I found feather piles all around my barn and directly outside the coop with 1 pile of feathers being about 60 feet from the barn out in one of the pastures. I found no evidence at all of two of the biggest hens so something just carried them off to the woods I guess. There were no body parts at all to be found, just feathers. I was originally thinking raccoons but then my Father (avid hunter) came down and said he found bobcat tracks. Obviously something killed them, I'm just wondering if the type of evidence left would point to typical raccoon group kill or a bobcat kill? And would 1 bobcat kill 8 chickens? I just have a hard time grasping 1 cat doing that much killing at one time.