Chicken is M.I.A

[Farm life101]

Hello fellow chicken lovers!

I’ve had one of my girls disappear into thin air . I noticed she was missing around 5p.m when I was getting my chickens to spray them for bugs and couldn’t find her ANYWHERE. I’ve looked and looked again and again but find nothing. We have them in our backyard which is a bit more then a half acre. We have it fenced in with a 6ft wood fence but there are palmettos in our backyard in one strip in our yard which makes it a wooded area I would say as it’s very dense. So an animal could be in there without my knowledge. We’ve had hawks kill one of our chickens before but they were messy and ate the chicken in our yard but this was about a year ago. I still hear and see hawks every so often as they are an issue where I live in Florida. But the girls and rooster have many hiding areas in the yard and are good about watching them. I checked my yard all over for prints of an animal or feather or blood and saw absolutely squat. Any idea what this can be or what I should do with my other chickens?

 

[pennyJo1960]

I am so sorry she is missing no where she could hide with eggs ? Are you able to attach photos of the yard and coop? Please

 

[WthrLady]

At 5pm, did she sneak off and roost? Ours at roosting time can't be moved with calling, bribes, or a forklift. Completely missing after tomorrow morning and my guess would be a fox, fenced in or not.

 

[Farm life101]

The hen went missing is definitely a stay with the flock type bird and I typically put our chickens up around 5 or 6. She was a bantam silkie so I know she couldnt have flown over the fence or up in a tree. I guess we will see if she is back in the morning

 

[Farm life101]

I am so sorry she is missing no where she could hide with eggs ? Are you able to attach photos of the yard and coop? Please

I can get pictures of yard and coop in the morning as it’s dark and you wouldn’t see much rn lol

 

[pennyJo1960]

The hen went missing is definitely a stay with the flock type bird and I typically put our chickens up around 5 or 6. She was a bantam silkie so I know she could have flown over the fence or up in a tree. I guess we will see if she is back in the morning

Trust me silkie are not known for flying ability

 

[Farm life101]

Trust me silkie are not known for flying ability

Lol yeah I think the highest she ever got was a few inches of the ground. I just realized it said could I meant couldn’t, oops

 

[sourland]

Hopefully she is sitting on a hidden nest.

 

[hayley3]

I would buy a trail camera and carefully watch my remaining chickens just in case.
A fox can easily climb a fence. Normally if there's no evidence, it's a canine of some sort, fox or coyote. I lost a hen between noon and 4pm to a fox.

Hopefully she returns though.
My favorite chicken of all time was my silkie rooster, who the fox took...that's when I had to stop letting them outside the barn area. Of course the hen was inside when he climbed over that fence, which had never happened in 13 yrs of living there.

 

[Farm life101]

The only reasons I don’t think it was a mammal like a fox or bobcat is because our lab goes crazy in our backyard smelling if something comes in. The hawks that live near us are only about a year or two old so would they still be sloppy with killing them? No sign of her this morning but I had to leave pretty quickly so I didn’t check the yard just next to the coop