Fox attack??? Torn comb

[badhabitz98]

I was hoping someone could help me out. I lost four hens and a roo last night. Only feathers remained. No blood, no bodies. I scoured the property and found feathers here and there but the only chickens remaining were petrified this morning and a couple wouldn't come off the roost. I'm thinking a fox although I can't figure out where it dug in. I honestly would think humans were the culprit except one of the remaining hens has a comb nearly torn off. How do you doctor that type of thing? I cleaned it up with peroxide and put blu kote on it, but I'm not sure what to do outside of that. Can someone help please?

 

[benreed]

I can't help with the treatment side of it but I would definitely say it was a fox. We had a very similar incident with our first batch of quail a few months back, no bodies left behind only some feathers around garden. Apparently foxes just kill for sport and will take the birds one by one somewhere to finish them off so a friend of mine told me.

Looks like that hen got off luckier than the others. Hope she is ok!

 

[Coffee 1st]

I was hoping someone could help me out. I lost four hens and a roo last night. Only feathers remained. No blood, no bodies. I scoured the property and found feathers here and there but the only chickens remaining were petrified this morning and a couple wouldn't come off the roost. I'm thinking a fox although I can't figure out where it dug in. I honestly would think humans were the culprit except one of the remaining hens has a comb nearly torn off. How do you doctor that type of thing? I cleaned it up with peroxide and put blu kote on it, but I'm not sure what to do outside of that. Can someone help please?

Sorry to hear about your loss. Im new to chickens so cant help you on taking care of your girl. but dont put it past the 2 legged predator i opened my coop couple mornings ago and there was a guy sleeping in it.. scared the sh$t out of me.. anyways i went out and got locks with keys.. maybe that is a torn comb because she was trying to get away and go through a fence or something. i seen on another post that a hen had a torn cone from doing that.. hope your little girl heals soon...

 

[badhabitz98]

Thank you for the response. The coop sits about 40' from my house. I am blown away my dogs didn't alert me of something going on outside. I've got three big over protective dogs that bark when a leaf falls outside. One of my hens is an Egyptian fayoumi and anyone that knows about them, knows how loud they are. She is the alarm of the coop besides the rooster. She's louder than him though. I can't believe my dogs wouldn't have alerted to it. The fayoumi was terrified this morning and dang near jumped into my arms when I came in the coop. She was throwing a fit! I'm going to put a camera out and maybe some sort of alarm and be ready with the rifle. I won't have it killing my girls.

PS- I have a rescue duck that roosts on the ground and is slow moving. I can't figure out how he survived the attack. But I've got 14 girls left and the duck. I am really going to miss that rooster! I hand raised all of them and just broken hearted.

 

[badhabitz98]

Now that you've said that, I wonder.... I have a lock but I never used the actual lock. I guess I should start now. My dogs should have alerted to a person being in the yard though. They always do. I just don't know what to think now.

 

[benreed]

Do you have an old smartphone kicking about? I started using an app / service called Presence to keep an eye on the coup after we lost ours, I'm too new to be able to post links I think but Google and you should find it. It allows you to use an old phone as a network enabled camera if you have somewhere you can secure it.

 

[badhabitz98]

I have a couple actually. I am going to set that up today! Thank you so much! I truly had no idea. I was about to go buy a couple trail cams today but I'll try this first. It's dark out there though... How does that work? Does it turn on the flash or something?

 

[benreed]

You can set it up to take photos when movement is sensed or you can log in and watch a stream. I've only used it to watch a stream but you can basically remote control the camera from another phone and control the lights as well, so I'm guessing you can set the camera to have the flash fire when it takes stills too?