So not sure where to put this as the predator, in this case, is our birds.
We are keeping our silkies penned in a garage for the winter. There were ten of them, all hatched last year. They are very docile and easy to handle as most silkies are. We had 5 pullets and 5 cockerels. We had hoped to rehome most of the cockerels but hadn't found any takers. Now I don't think that'd be an appropriate option.
Today we found one of the cockerels dead. It had to have happened the day before or earlier this morning. I can’t figure out the cause of death. They had food/water and the rest seem fine and not too cold at all. There’s no sign a predator got in, if one had I’d expect more mess and fewer birds. I never even saw any signs of bullying from any of them. But I did notice that the dread cockerel had his back cavity open as if it’d been picked at, and we suspect, cannibalized.
So now we have 1 dead silkie, and 9 who appear to be perfectly healthy and well-adjusted, but we need to do something to prevent more silkies from finding this same fate.
Our solution right now; we think we should cull all of the remaining cockerels. It'll be sad since two had names already (Midnight and Coconut) but we can't trust them not to turn on the hens next or lead to more cannibalization in the future. The hens, I'm not sure we can trust either, but I'm more hesitant to get rid of them. Instead I'll give them a chance and just keep a close watch on them, checking in more often.
It feels like a very surreal and morbid game of among us with our ten little silkies, you'd never imagine the little puff-balls you hatched and raised would do something like this. The hens haven't even laid their first eggs yet and we'd thought we'd been doing well with keeping them pinned indoors over the winter. But somethings gone wrong, and now we need to step in, fix it, and learn how to prevent it in the future.
We are keeping our silkies penned in a garage for the winter. There were ten of them, all hatched last year. They are very docile and easy to handle as most silkies are. We had 5 pullets and 5 cockerels. We had hoped to rehome most of the cockerels but hadn't found any takers. Now I don't think that'd be an appropriate option.
Today we found one of the cockerels dead. It had to have happened the day before or earlier this morning. I can’t figure out the cause of death. They had food/water and the rest seem fine and not too cold at all. There’s no sign a predator got in, if one had I’d expect more mess and fewer birds. I never even saw any signs of bullying from any of them. But I did notice that the dread cockerel had his back cavity open as if it’d been picked at, and we suspect, cannibalized.
So now we have 1 dead silkie, and 9 who appear to be perfectly healthy and well-adjusted, but we need to do something to prevent more silkies from finding this same fate.
Our solution right now; we think we should cull all of the remaining cockerels. It'll be sad since two had names already (Midnight and Coconut) but we can't trust them not to turn on the hens next or lead to more cannibalization in the future. The hens, I'm not sure we can trust either, but I'm more hesitant to get rid of them. Instead I'll give them a chance and just keep a close watch on them, checking in more often.
It feels like a very surreal and morbid game of among us with our ten little silkies, you'd never imagine the little puff-balls you hatched and raised would do something like this. The hens haven't even laid their first eggs yet and we'd thought we'd been doing well with keeping them pinned indoors over the winter. But somethings gone wrong, and now we need to step in, fix it, and learn how to prevent it in the future.
