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

[ReiMiraa]

it was a cute female bantm that hatched sometime friday-saturday.
well i am back to no chicks hatched. (had one hatch from an impossible clutch) i went and checked on it and the hen and it was gone. there was no sign of it even existing except for the fact there is one egg less so i wasn't imagining things yesterday.

i even picked the hen up and shook it to see if it was hiding under its feathers. nothing. if it had somehow gotten out of the pen the other chickens would of eaten it but there is no sign of chick feathers anywhere.

mom asked me if the momma hen could of ate it.

could a broody hen eat its own chick???

i was so sad i wanted to show john (my bf) it because it was the lucky one that hatched from eggs i considered dead.

i mean people freak out on the boards here if the temp in their brooder drops or spikes for hours. these 8 eggs were wet and cold for 2 days (the broody quit sitting). so i put them under the new broody coshin....

it was so cute and fit in the palm of my hand!!!!

what should i do if others hatch? remove them from the hen and put them in a brooder??

please help. i had named it windy cos it survived getting wet and cold in the windstorm to hatch.... now it seems like it was really unlucky......

 

[BlackBart]

No a Broody would not eat her own chick. She would kill it if it was deformed.
Rat?

 

[ReiMiraa]

i have a small dog kennel with chain link fence. and i lined the inside with that wirecloth and there is chicken wire and a tarp over the top. there is only one small hole it could of gotten out 30-40% chance.

there is no sign of chick feathers or bones or blood anywhere.

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

I had a snake get one...I know, cause I caught the snake. Snakes can get in some really tiny places.
One thing that works for snakes is balled up bird netting, the thin, black kind you put on fruit trees.
They can't crawl through it, they get caught.

 

[ReiMiraa]

you would think the hen would try to kill the snake. what we have here are garter and bull or black racers. small frog or mice eating snakes. i love the bull snakes cause they eat the rattlers.

i guess it could of been a snake. it would explain the lack of evidence......

and i remember last summer that one of the mexicans that lived there saw a huge snake in my big coop hanging on the roost... not bothering my chickens back then.... they never killed it and they never killed it either... but they will kill mice....

 

[ReiMiraa]

i found the chick. 500 feet away from the pen. i guess it got out and either it died of expose or one of the chickens got it and carried it off. its body was intact but its head was a little crushed and the ants were on it. i told it sorry i didn't make the pen secure enough and tossed it in the dumpster.....

i tried to secure it better now and hope more of the impossible eggs hatch....

course now it would be even more impossible because we have a big thunder/wind and rain storm sneak up and there is only a tarp covering the hen sitting on the eggs in a cardboard box.... so yeah,.

when john goes to put the chickens away tonight i will have him check them and see if they are dry....

-sigh- now if there are any more chicks hatched from that pen they will be removed and placed in a brooder. no chances.

the other tractor seems more secure but no hatches yet..............

 

[micaheart]

I'm sorry about your loss. I have never seen a newborn chick wander that far from mama. Even if it did manage to get out of the fencing (which seems remote). Usually they will stay close to the fence where mom is. I suppost something could have gotten it once it was on the outside and carried it the 500 ft. But again, a chick that young stays very close to mom....sounds suspicious to me.

 

[ReiMiraa]

either it happened during yesterday while i was at work and it gout out and one of the chickens got it or something.... but when i watche my chickens catch a mouse they run around chasing the one who has it.... and normally the mouse bodie is never intact.

could ants have started to decompose its head that fast? its head was squished all i saw was the beak but nothing else to let me know the head remained.... at first i thought it was headless.....


case a: so if it was my chickens, why did they not eat it? why only take it that far and leave it?

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Chickens can catch mice??? How cool is that, I didn't know that.

My hen was outside her nest (snake was in it under the straw) and flapping, and screaming, and carrying on...but she was up against a snake later measured at six feet. But she was trying.

I poked in the hay with a stick being careful of the eggs that were starting to hatch but the snake would not come out. I ended up tipping the plastic dog crate on the front to dump the snake out...which dumped the eggs out too. She was sitting on 13.
snake got one, one was not fertile, and one cracked and died from the dumping out.
Ten were born, one runt died in about 36 hours, at four weeks one never came out of the woods where she had taken them.
Eight are still doing fine. They are called the snake batch of chicks.

 

[tnchickenut]

My best guess... cat.

I have a few "grow out pens" that are dog kennels with tarp roofs. I had to reinforce the bottom 4 feet with chicken fence so the smallest ones couldn't get out..... but within minutes I realized my cats who normally didn't bother going over chainlink... were climbing it like a ladder and doing their "clicky" thing when they can't help but want to kill. So, I reinforced it all a bit better with more chicken fencing and more bungy cords to pull the tarp snug over the top and down the sides.

No, cats do not always eat what they kill and, yes, they can kill without leaving a mark. A domestic cat will kill it because instinct tells it to, but it doesn't see it as food because "food" is in a dish.

A snake would have eatten it and you never would have found a body. I really don't think it would wander from "mom" either. Yup, I bet cat. But, please don'e blame the cat. If you or your neighbors have one that pops in your mind to blame. They can't help it. It's their instincts getting the best of them.