Redkan wrote: I picked her up and examined her but the only sign of injury that I could find was about 1/3 of her wing feathers are missing from her left wing although she does seem mildly sore.
I'd guess she'd `gone shocky' in reflex/response to a predator attack. If avoidance (running and/or hiding) doesn't work and a chook is grabbed up, they tend to go limp, `playing dead' (toxic immobility), the final survivalist tactic universal to vertebrates (snakes belly up, opossums-of course, humans in fetal position, etc.). In chooks the range between `limp' and `long gone' seems very limited.
We had a Gold Sex Link pullet grabbed up by a fox (feet hanging from one side of mouth, head swinging, on limp neck, extending from the other). I was standing about 10yds away when this happened. Picked up rifle and took off after them. Fox got snarled up in vines and dropped the girl. The pullet fell limp to the ground; fox skedaddled, then the girl jumped to her feet and ran `screaming' past me up the hill, she then collapsed again and went limp
again. I dealt with the fox and turned around expecting to see the pullet dead in the clover but, no, she had disappeared!
Found her, about ten minutes later, ranging with the rest of the flock. She'd lost some feathers and required four stitches on her left flank, but lived for another year-and-a-half before expiring from the complications resulting from internal laying.
It is possible your hen hadn't `cleared' the excess of stress hormones/endorphins when you found her. You picked her up and she mistook you for whatever it was that got the feathers.
From what I've seen even low levels of stress can throw off layers (neighbor's dog walking along the run fencing/spying a high flying hawk on a windy fall day and then `alerting' to any and all leaves skirring/plummeting into the run, etc.).
As the trip from toxic immobility to sudden death by cardiac arrest can be brief, isolating a `shocked' chook in a quiet, dark place for a few hours might help (particularly if actually wounded). Also, adding electrolytes to the water wouldn't hurt.
We've only heard `screaming' on two other occasions. The first after the death of another GSL pullet, grabbed up while dust bathing, by a fox, right under the window of the room in which I'm typing this (no more `light' colored hens for us, in these woods, no free ranging without an armed human on patrol). The GSL's `best buddy', a Black Sex Link pullet, returned to the dust bathing spot when let out the following day. She whined, and then started running and screaming around the house (looked under the decks, back to run, in coop, etc.). This behavior continued for about ten minutes. She remained under the deck for the remainder of the evening and the roo and Cass had to herd her back to the coop at sundown. I wouldn't want to anthropomorphize, but I'd say, maybe, a chook analogue of `distraught'.
The second occasion is described in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=214721
The following thread is pretty much focused on `pre-terror' vocalizations:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=11691&p=1
Set a trap and see if the putative `wing waster' can't be prevented from any further `stress testing' of both yourself and the hens.
ed:sp/clarity
