I have about 17 fully feathered chicks in a 10x10x6 dog kennel. Now, before anyone says anything I'd like to say we had an unexpected hatch FULL of chicks and all the smaller babies are in the safer pens. We cannot put them together, therefore the only pen we have for the 17 chicks is the dog kennel. They have protection from the rain, theres chicken wire all the way around it, and we burried chicken wire below the fence so anything that tries to dig under will have a hard time. Today I found my favorite chick stuffed up in the corner of the fence, I pulled her out and her face was purple, she has absolutely no markings or wounds on her what so ever. I don't understand what happened. It's like she was smothered? We just killed a 5 foot long snake... could it be another one? But wouldn't it have eaten her? Since my chicks pile up on top of each other at night time, and since she was defiantly the one on the bottom of the pile, is it possible the other chicks smothered her? My chicks were all healthy, all getting food and fresh water, and I pet her and held her last night till they went to sleep. Does this even sound like a predator? <sigh> Guess I'm just trying to let out some of the sadness. Thankyou for the help
How old are they? I think it could have been either she just got stuck on the bottom of the pile and wasn't strong enough to get out or maybe a snake wrapped her up and constricted her and never ate her. I have heard that predators such as racoons can reach through poultry wire and that using hardware cloth provides much more protection. I am sorry for your loss. I really hope you can figure this out. Good luck to you and your babies.
Hmm a snake would at least attempt to eat it if he killed it, leaving it kinda slimy and yucky where the snake had it's mouth over it's head (before it gave up). Raccoons would have removed or partially removed the head. Since there were no wounds I would rule out a mink or weasel as well. I would guess it was probably smothered by a pile of other chicks or simply failure to thrive because of some internal abnormality. Either way I am sorry for your loss .
They are about 2 1/2 months old, but huge little boogers. Thankyou both for the kind words, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I guess I'll be going around, and attempt to secure the pen more until we can get them somwhere safer
If they are old enough to roost at night you should give them one. That will spread them out and stop the pileup at night.
