We let our Jersey Giants out today and we came home and checked the chickens and we lost 9 birds 4 white leghorns and 5 blue and black Jersey Giants we lost our beautiful male we found 2 bodys and they had bite marks at their necks and alot of blood
I just want to get like 200 traps and make a wall around our coops I noticed the other day that there were small cat/fox like prints in the snow but our Jersey Giants have been around for ever (cause they don't get eaten because they are so big I guess) now we have 4 birds left in the coop 2 blue Jersey Giant females 1 black jersey giant female and a leghorn giant mix female
I'm so sorry. I lost 14 birds one horrible day, it is so hard. Hope the others aren't too traumatized.
Oh no! I am so sorry. I am fighting ANOTHER MINK! I have the traps set...and ready. I sure hope you get your predator....they are so hard to catch!
I think it is a big group of fox now because I found a body with no head or neck and I saw mud fox prints in the snow my Jersey Giant girls that are left are just staying in the house not going out to the run I hope you get the mink I read that post actually when I went to give food and water to the birds I saw so many feathers they were everywhere
Wow Redchicken, so sorry to hear that, I hope you catch the culprit. That must have been horrible for you. Those poor chickens....
Quote:As far as I've ever seen from years of watching and studying wildlife, fox don't 'group'. Coyotes and stray/feral dogs do. A fox will also normally snatch its food and run to a safe place to eat it (like a den for the kits) because they're just not big enough to stop much from taking their food from them. If anything, since you say some bodies were still there, that's more like a 'coon or opossum if your birds are in a fenced-in run, and a dog(s) if free-ranged.
With bodies strewn around, I want to say dog... How much were eaten or were they just dead with blood? I wonder if dog made a kill and something like possum came by and started to dine. Years back, I lost my whole flock of 20 some birds to a family of coons in two nights. The first night they went under the coop and took half the birds out killed them and dragged them away. After that fix they learned how to open the door and killed everyone. Thing with coons here is though, is that they took all the bodies and I didn't find any more than a few wings and a the comb of my big roo. Needless to say that weekend, I got a have a heart and set it becides their prevoius point of entry, caught 3 coons in 3 nights and didn't have a problem for the rest of that year.