Bonanzagal
In the Brooder
- Feb 5, 2020
- 11
- 5
- 24
Two nights ago I got home about 8:00 and found one of my almost 3-year pld Black Star hens sprawled in the middle of the backyard. I picked her up and she raised her head slightly without opening her eyes and made a guttural, mournful, pained noise that I cannot unhear. Frantically I searched her over and found a hole the size of two half dollars on the side of her belly under her right wing. It was horrible; I could see organs and it looked like some had been pulled out. Her body was still warm and her heart barely beating. There were no bites or scratches or pecks or any kind of marking that I could see other than that horrible hole. She had been a very heavy, fast, healthy and loud girl. She passed away within minutes. She had mud, chicken poop,and chicken feed crumbles all over her belly like she had been dragged and she had crumbles in her mouth like she had been eating when it happened. My last Rhode Island Red hen (same age) is also missing; no feathers, not a single trace of blood. Our backyard is chain link and our neighbors are near and my family was home all day long and didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. I had not locked the pen yet and usually lock it by 7 at night. We now have 17 hens, 2 roosters, 7 ducks (2 are 1 year and 5 are 8 months old) and 1 male French Talouse goose (8 months old). Our goose makes a lot of noise when alerted, but he cries wolf so if he had raised a fuss my family would not have thought much of it. We have one white Pekin drake that chases the hens and tries to pull their tail feathers or peck them on the head, but he is not successful because of our goose and roos who chase him away from the girls. That night all thr chickens were alert and huddled close in the coop and the ducks and goose were on the other side of the yard; they usually like to sleep in the middle of the yard where I found my poor hen; I found that odd. We have an outhouse style coop with a chain link dog pen around it and the bottom half of the chain link is reinforced with chicken wire to help prevent animals pulling one of them through. Last summer before the chicken wire was up I found a young pullet beheaded; her body was pressed against the fence and her head was missing and looked like an animal had chewed it off; there were feathers everywhere but not a trace of blood. I never found her head. It was very sad. We will be installing a camera this weekend. What kills a hen in these manners and manages to take another on the same night or that morning of, without a trace? No feathers or blood.
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