We came home an hour after dark after helping some friends process some chickens to find that something else processed some of OUR chickens. One Dominique hen was pulled headfirst though the fence and missing her head & crop, two Silkies taken... one with just feathers left behind, and the other feathers and her head... both pulled through the fence. Found our partially crippled Dominique hen almost 10 year old hen unhurt but scared in the field behind the coop (no idea how she could've gotten that far unless she was carried & dropped or just sheer terror got her that far), another Dominique hen with a huge chunk of skin & flesh ripped off her neck (she has a big tumor in her abdomen that hadn't seemed to bother her, but I may just put her down after this). Also found our banty Dom roo, Onslow, stuck between two fences, scared but unhurt, and Fred, one of the largefowl Dominique roos, hiding behind the rabbit pens tarp (poor guy shut his eyes and just started SCREAMING when I picked him up... he was terrified!).
We set up two havahart traps with the remains of the birds that were killed, and we turned on the Xmas lights we have strung up on the coops, and there's a radio playing in the forge next to the coops. I am so scared whatever it was is going to come back again (I guess I can forget about sleeping tonite). By the signs, I'm thinking raccoon, which I pray isn't what it is... we've been fortunate enough to not have a problem with any in the almost 10 years we've had chickens here (we've lost a few birds here and there to foxes in the spring that we so far haven't been able to catch, and a hawk tried once and that's it). Our two big dogs (a GSD & an Aussie) are usually pretty good at keeping most predators away from our animals.
~Lily
We set up two havahart traps with the remains of the birds that were killed, and we turned on the Xmas lights we have strung up on the coops, and there's a radio playing in the forge next to the coops. I am so scared whatever it was is going to come back again (I guess I can forget about sleeping tonite). By the signs, I'm thinking raccoon, which I pray isn't what it is... we've been fortunate enough to not have a problem with any in the almost 10 years we've had chickens here (we've lost a few birds here and there to foxes in the spring that we so far haven't been able to catch, and a hawk tried once and that's it). Our two big dogs (a GSD & an Aussie) are usually pretty good at keeping most predators away from our animals.
~Lily
