Don't weasels take the heads????

[MakNat]

I've always heard that. How do rats kill? Sounds sorta like a weasel, with the stack of dead chicks, but they still have their heads and looks like their necks are chewed on. I KNOW I have rats though, couldn't this be a rat problem? OR am I dealing with rats and weasels????

 

[MakNat]

Also, these are just the babies and larger chicks who sleep on the floor with there mom. To small to fly up and roast. No hens have every been harmed on the floor. Nor have the ducks big or small who sleep on the floor, KNOCK ON WOOD.

 

[bobbi-j]

Hmm, could be either, I suppose. If you know you have rats, I'd bet on those. The weasles that have gotten my chickens would bite them in the neck or under the wing and drink/lap up/suck/consume (trying to cover all my bases as I've been criticized for this before) the blood, but the heads are intact. I think the youngest ones I've lost to weasels were about 6 weeks old, so I don't know what they'd do with babies.

 

[woodmort]

No--they have razor sharp teeth and make cuts that, once they have lapped up the blood, are very hard to see.

 

[theFox]

When you find a bird dead inside an enclosure with its head and crop missing, your visitor was a raccoon. If the head and back of the neck are missing, suspect a weasel or mink. If the head and neck are missing, and feathers are scattered near a fence post, the likely perp is a great horned owl.

Just as a raccoon will reach into a pen and pull off a chicken's head, so will it also pull off a leg, if that's what it gets hold of first. Dogs, too, may prowl underneath a raised pen, bite at protruding feet, and pull off legs.

 

[kip]

Set some rat snap traps with the yellow big trigger (victor) by a wall or something, weasels and rats don't want to walk in the open so they walk as close to a barrier as posible(wall, hedgerow, logs or whatever). An rat trap will kill an weasel in an instand somit won't suffer. you could also make an weasel box, safe to use in erea's with human. try bloody meat as bait.

 

[MakNat]

I think its a rat. They have horrid nasty wounds around their necks, with the heads still there. It only comes at night with the lights out! And only attacks small birds, even though some big birds sleep on the floor. I think I'm going looking for some black snakes. A snake will eat the rats and I sure don't mind to give a snake a egg treat everyonce in a while, just as long as I don't have to see him!!!! I know a snake will eat chicks, but if it came to that he may take 1, but I doubt he will kill14 others just for fun....