For two mornings in a row I've opened the coop to find a headless Kahki Campbell duck under the nest boxes. Yesterday I plugged some vents with hardware cloth and blanketed the outside of the coop with traps. I baited a 4-way set with the duck carcasses under a barrell. That set did the trick. I found the culprit this morning. A MINK! (sadly departed ) So, lesson learned. Everybody likes ducks. We've had 3 ducks killed in 3 weeks. The other was killed by a Red-tailed hawk.
In my opinion, mink are the worst of all predators. They kill for the sake of killing, and you are very lucky that you have any birds left at all. We are in the midst of a huge animal relocation right now. The land is flooded for miles around, and many of the animals that live in these areas are being forced to move. Our roads are lined with the carcasses of mink, muskrat, skunk, coon, etc.
