I have coyotes running the fields, fox with babies across the street in the neighbors woods and a day ago I found a raccoon in my coop run when i let the chickens out in the morning.
Last night I was a dumb butt and forgot to close up the coop. Around what I am guessing is about 5am one of my chickens (the best layer to be exact) was stolen from my coop. She had just got done laying an egg and was down on the ground. The rest were on the roost. I went out at 6 and saw tons of feathers in the coop, more outside. We have a fence that has squares that start at the bottom at about 2 inch go to 3 inch and then finally 4 inch squares the rest of the way up the fence. Its like cattle panel. I have a two foot piece of chicken wire to help keep the cats out. The chicken was dragged through the 2 inch squares or maybe the 3, then taken off our property to a bushy area with lots of cover and was eaten there. The only thing left was the back(completely picked clean) and the feet. I looked for prints but it had rained really hard and all are gone. I found a pile of poop pretty close to it. It was gray color with obvious berry seeds in it. The rest just looked like it had been eating grains or something. It sorta looked like softer dog poop. It was around the size of a females palm. Any ideas? I"ve searched the net for poop pictures and looked on here for the preditor list. Just hoping someone could help.
Last night I was a dumb butt and forgot to close up the coop. Around what I am guessing is about 5am one of my chickens (the best layer to be exact) was stolen from my coop. She had just got done laying an egg and was down on the ground. The rest were on the roost. I went out at 6 and saw tons of feathers in the coop, more outside. We have a fence that has squares that start at the bottom at about 2 inch go to 3 inch and then finally 4 inch squares the rest of the way up the fence. Its like cattle panel. I have a two foot piece of chicken wire to help keep the cats out. The chicken was dragged through the 2 inch squares or maybe the 3, then taken off our property to a bushy area with lots of cover and was eaten there. The only thing left was the back(completely picked clean) and the feet. I looked for prints but it had rained really hard and all are gone. I found a pile of poop pretty close to it. It was gray color with obvious berry seeds in it. The rest just looked like it had been eating grains or something. It sorta looked like softer dog poop. It was around the size of a females palm. Any ideas? I"ve searched the net for poop pictures and looked on here for the preditor list. Just hoping someone could help.