Disappearing Chicks.. Who is the culprit?

[Isadora]

I just read about using baking soda to poison them. I am going to mix up some of that also! It's WAR now

Good luck.

 

[PurpleCArTires]

I think it's probably just 1 or 2 for now. I don't alot of see rat droppings even up in the soffett areas. I am gonna put my cat up there too to spread her smell all over and scare out any thing hiding. I checked the soffett yesterday and didn't see the rat, tho so maybe it's still getting in somewhere.

Sorry for all the ranting posts, I am just pissed it's a stinky rat stealing my chickens.

 

[PurpleCArTires]

Got Him!!
Gonna keep the traps set for a while longer. I saw a few of my peanut butter/baking soda treats chewed on too.. so hopefully those kill anything else that might be lurking around.

 

[Cute Silkies]

I have a concrete building which used to be an old bathroom (our property used to be a campground, so picture those dirty park bathrooms with dim lighting LOL). I converted into a chicken coop and I have three pens inside. One leads out an automated chicken door to a .5 acre run, my layers and two roosters live in that pen. The other is just a hole in the wall that leads to a covered run about 20x20, this is where my silkies and pullets/cockerels live (its covered so they don't get carried off by hawks while they learn to free range). the third pen sits between the two larger pens. It has no outside access at all. This is where i put my 1-6 week old chicks.

Well the past week two of my silkie chicks have disappeared. No feathers, blood, nothing. They are about 4 weeks old and decent sized. When the first one disappeared, i though maybe it snuck out while I was feeding them, and ran out through the main door. I searched and found nothing. Since then, I have been careful to keep the main door closed incase any more escaped. But today I noticed my second silkie chick is just gone. The other chicks dont seem afraid at all. there is no blood or feathers or anything. Its just disappeared. I have seen some rat droppings and my cat has gone into the coop, but she has never ever showed interest in the chicks or chickens and she cant get in there at night.

We have some of those glass windows that "roll" open (like 4 slats and you turn the key to open them). I had to take the screens off since they got clogged with dust, but I am putting them back on for now until I can Macgyver some hardware cloth coverings. I am also ordering an automatic door and will close off the hole in the wall at night until it arrives. Even if something snuck in through those, it would need to go past the larger chickens and through .5 inch chicken wire to get to the chicks.

I know rats can eat chicks, but these silkies were pretty big and I imagine it would have left a bloody mess and terrified the other chicks. I was also thinking maybe a snake, but again, the larger chickens would have probably attacked it and I would imagine the other chicks would be terrified. And if a snake ate a chick, it would have to be pretty big and would get stuck in the fencing trying to leave (at least thats my theory).

Any thoughts on what or who the culprit might be?

I had a silky eaten by a snake. I saw the python snake with a lump in it not far from the pen one night .. but thought it ate a rest until the next day I noticed my silky was missing. They are pretty small without their fluffy feathers.. it fitted out a fairly small hole under the pen.