I know this is a very old post but I just wanted to share my experience. We moved onto a big piece of property and a few days later discovered a feral cat living under the house. It was winter and we took pity on her and fed her and gave her a heated waterer. She never warmed up to us, hissed every time she saw us, but would hang out on the front step. She quickly learned that if we saw her waiting out there that we would feed her. We would take food out to her and she would run off until we went back inside and then she would eat. She ate more food than any other cat I have ever had. We just couldn't keep her satisfied. She would go through our trash and when our fridge went bad, she figured out how to open a cooler we had on the porch where we temporarily kept our cold food. Because we couldn't tame her enough to get close to her, she had kittens under the house in late winter. We got chickens in March and they were out in the coop about a month later. That's when our chickens started to disappear, always during the day when they were out free ranging. We thought since the cat was well fed, that she would't go after the chickens. We were wrong. All summer long, we lost chickens here and there but did not attribute it to the cat because we were feeding her. Why hunt a large chicken when you don't have to? The kittens we were able to tame and they are sweet and friendly and are scared of the chickens. We assumed a hawk was doing this even though we have a large crow colony in the woods nearby and they chase off any hawks we ever see. A few weeks ago, we lost our largest chicken, a buff orpington. Found a pile of feathers right by our front door and that was it. A few nights ago, something got into our brooder area and ate only part of a baby chick. The mother hen lost a lot of feathers and has a badly scratched face, but she must have put up a good enough fight to stop the critter from eating the rest of the baby chick. That same day, I was walking past a stack of scrap metal and heard the cat growling at me. I looked under it and saw her hunched over an adult wellsummer chicken, eating it. So we finally figured out who was picking off our chickens. I was amazed that a smaller than average feral cat could take down our biggest hens but she did it. She wasn't hungry. She did it because it was in her nature and what she was used to doing to survive. My point being- Any cat, even a small cat can take down and eat a chicken if given the opportunity. We felt terrible, but since the cat was feral and couldn't be stopped if we kept her around, we had her dispatched.
