Chicken head missing

katapillarb

Chirping
11 Years
Joined
Jul 27, 2014
Messages
44
Reaction score
4
Points
89
Today when I got home from work around lunch time I checked eggs and found 1 bantam with its head missing in the nesting box. The body was not touched and the head was clean off and missing. I do not have an automatic door for the coop but I do have chicken fencing around the chicken run with the chicken coop within it. I'm assuming it happened at night when all the chickens went in. Do you know what predator this could be?
 
Raccoons will tear off a chicken’s head but I’ve also heard opossums will do the same thing. Have not had a problem with the latter personally. Oftentimes raccoons will reach in and grab the chicken’s head and try to pull the whole thing out through whatever hole they reached into and that’s how the chicken ends up headless. Is there a hole in your coop it could have reached through?
 
Raccoons will tear off a chicken’s head but I’ve also heard opossums will do the same thing. Have not had a problem with the latter personally. Oftentimes raccoons will reach in and grab the chicken’s head and try to pull the whole thing out through whatever hole they reached into and that’s how the chicken ends up headless. Is there a hole in your coop it could have reached through?
No the raccoon would have had to ge tin the coop and the chicken was in the nesting box which the hole is the size of a chicken
 
I would shore up your coop at least so that they are safe at night. 1/2" hardware cloth over the windows and cover any cracks and holes with it. You might want to bury some a foot to 18" around the outside of it to keep diggers out. When that door is shut, they should be safe inside of it.

I'd look around as there's probably a way in you didn't know about.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom