lost anohter chicken! what killed this?- PIC ALERT

[tinyscrafts]

I heard the commotion, at 4 am and found this.


The thing had to have fit awkwardly thru about a 6 inch opening thru some hardware cloth/ramp craziness I have going into the little coop door. This is the second dead hen i've found with the neck skin and crop/part of breast eaten off.

WHAT IS THIS?
I am taking steps today, but want to do it right...

And I live in URBAN So CA. fox/coyote and anything else is still a possiblity i guess. I thought mabye possum? skunk? cat?

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

I have had a possum kill some of our hens the same way. I set a live trap and baited it with a recent kill and caught the possum that way.

 

[aart]

Put that corpse in a live trap and you'll soon enough know...then you can exact revenge and rid yourself of the threat!

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Looks and sounds like an owl kill to me. Notice how the neck and keel bones have been stripped of all meat.

 

[BoPeep6]

Last year I had this happen. Lost Three chickens. They looked almost the same as yours. Later we discovered that a raccoon had been living in our barn (he didn't get any more because after the first attack we moved them back inside until we got a better/stronger coop).