I lost a nice cockerel I was planning on using as a replacement rooster a couple weeks ago. He was already the head honcho in his flock.I only count chicks hatched then I forget anyway lol. I should keep track. I am about ready to do some rooster swapping, naked neck and jersey giant. Something different to hatch out. Just saw last weekend I have two red naked necks, could've swore there was three. Was debating whether or not to use them or just use white and black. Plenty of snow outside and no evidence of a predator nabbing. Maybe I only had two of them IDK
Lol!
It was right at dusk when I was making the rounds closing up. There were 35 birds in the building and he was the only one killed. Nothing eaten. Not sure what happened but a huge feral cat had been hanging out at that coop at dusk every evening. The only thing I can figure is the cat tried to take a smaller bird and the rooster confronted it and then the cat heard me coming and escaped before it ate anything.
A raccoon would have eaten something. A fox or coyote would have carried it off. A mink wouldn't have stopped till it killed everything in the building.

It had been well below freezing so I just took the rooster out and kept it in the back of the truck. It finally thawed out a couple days ago and I grilled him up and fed him back to the chickens yesterday.
I'm setting the first batch of eggs for 2018 on January 28. I'm shipping 25 eggs to Florida and whatever eggs I end up collecting after I ship those will go in the incubator.Sounds lovely. I gather you're incubating already?