Okay, here is my two cents. Could it possibly be a vulture? I know the hawk portion is odd, but vultures lack the power in their feet to carry big prey away, so usually eat it where its found. They also love it when its fresh. I think its possible your girl already died and a vulture began to pick on her, maybe getting scared by a hawk (The ones here are very scared of hawks) Who knows, sorry this happened.
Thank you for the sympathy.
It certainly could have been. There are a lot of turkey vultures here, and they definitely descend fast when they are aware of something in the area. The only thing that doesn't make sense with that theory is that (so I was told, anyway) it looked like there was a bit of blood on her neck, almost like there could have been a bite wound or something. I guess that could have also happened if she had passed very recently and something picked at her almost immediately, while she still had enough blood that hadn't quite settled, or she could have broken a blood feather if she was convulsing or anything like that (since she was in the middle of molt with a fair amount of new feathers coming in on her neck).
I am getting all of this description secondhand, unfortunately, as I did not have the chance to look at her. The picture doesn't show any potential injuries that could have been hidden under feathers.
The hawk could have been eating her in place, as well, since there is no way it would have been able to get enough air with her to clear the fence. She weighed probably six or seven pounds, I would guess, though I never actually weighed her. It would have been a task for any smaller predator (bird or mammal) to move her at all, I think.
I’d like to add the comb turns purple after being settled from death. If a comb turns purple when alive thats something else but when my broody hen died her comb was very purple not to mention with her head bent back almost like yours. It was no predator, she died of cancer.
(Not looking for any sympathy here, i thought it would provide some useful information as mine had a purple comb due to blood getting settled, and she also looked like her body was twisted in a way.) Maybe its possible yours died a natural death and a predator attacked after that. It can happen so sudden. My hen was acting fine and digging with the chicks the day before and she passed hours after. They mask things well, if you noticed it then its possible it was already to late because of how well they mask things.
I'm sorry for the loss of your hen. I didn't even consider cancer as a possibility since she didn't drop weight like my other hen (who I am certain passed from cancer), but she had started to look pale and she was laying soft eggs on and off just like my other hen was in the few months before she passed. I found my duck who was laying soft eggs before she passed in that position, as well, which was why I thought maybe illness. In many of the predator kill pictures that I see, the birds are in all sorts of positions, most of them not that specific position.
Would the comb turn purple within an hour or two? She really wasn't sitting there that long. I think my older dog would have noticed something if a predator was killing one of the chickens right next to the fence (perhaps not a mink, if it happened fast, but he does still have a keen nose and is generally fairly reactive to a whole lot of things) so I'm thinking that it must have happened at some point between when he was let inside and my younger dog was let out, in the span of perhaps an hour or so. My younger dog was let outside and she ran to the fence immediately.
The thing that most confuses me here is that I've always heard a predator will keep coming back once they have made a successful kill, because they know that there is an easy food source. This tells me that either she was attacked because she was sick and an easier target and the predator just doesn't care enough to try otherwise, or that she had already passed due to other causes.
I guess I will never really know, at the end of the day.
. They do usually notice a fly over, but not always, depends, but when an attack occurs, at least here, all hell breaks lose, eagles screeching, birds squaking, dogs freaking out.. squirrels running wild, lol everyone knows something evil is going down. We don't have hawks, but Bald Eagles are pretty large predators.
