help missing chick!!!!!- update found chick, dead. think its my fault

[ReiMiraa]

well atleast you have had a more successful hatch than me but it seems we are both having bad luck..... i dont really think the snakes here would eat chicks (wishful thinking) since they can eat eggs or all the mice in the world. i am sure our orchard and backyard holds the amount of the US population over.

but yeah they do catch mice its the only form of protein they eat. they dont like the protein rooster show kibble i got them (when i had an egg eating or breaking problem)

i did drop 2 eggs today from collections one broke they were on it fast but i removed the shell so i hope they wont recgonize. and thew the other egg as far as i could.

 

[ReiMiraa]

we are pretty darn rural and if it is a cat it must be a survivor... cos we have german shepard+ sized coyotes and 9feet long cougars and bears and bobcats and hawks and lyns oh and one of the most deadly. the highway. found a mummified orange tabby on the side of the road by the driveway nothing went to eat it cos it was buried under snow all winter....

it could be a cat but i am more inclined to think my chickens are suspect. i do have small bantm chickens milli's and the cat could get them too but dont....
none of the other common predators would take it that far and leave it.

 

[fastpat]

Quote:
Yep. The head is the first thing a cat starts with, sometimes that's all the eat. Probably the chick went through the chain link, a chick will easily fit through standard link fence, and was spotted by a cat and caught.

 

[ReiMiraa]

nope. there were a few tiny gaps under some of the hardwire cloth that lines the inside of the kennel.

the head was still there just squished to where i could only see the beak the rest of the body was fine and there were no knine punctures that i sould associate with cat. no claw marks either. other than the head not a feather out of place.

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Maybe it was a very neat cat.

 

[tnchickenut]

Quote:
My cats dont' go after the bantams (silver sebrights) but do go after chicks... especially fluffy stage chicks. They also will bother and chase standard pullets and cockrels up until about 8 weeks old - that's pretty big... bigger than a sebright. My point is... size doens't matter. (hahaha) It's the movements of the chick and the "peep peep". I'm still betting cat. I have seen my very fat domesticated cat climb the chainlink to get to the chicks. So, "through" isn't the only way a cat could get in.

I'm just saying, the idea that it killed it and left it suggests domestic animal. Wild animals don't work for food and not eat it.

As for no puncture wounds and such... I have mice, moles, birds, and everything else they can grab left in my driveway... more often than not... they don't have puncture wounds. The cats wear the critters out and bounce them around until they die. Like I said before... there is a big difference in a domesticated well fed cat verses a feral cat.

Also, the head will start to look squished with decay. Just another angle to look into.