Hello all. I am weeping as I type this. I am in disbelief, I keep re-reading the title and going into shock when I realize what just happened. I came home from work tonight and immediately knew something was wrong. I just got a new job that requires me to work late nights, and I had been revamping my coop setup, so the coop door was not reachable for the silkie for the past couple days. Normally when I came home I would put her in the coop myself, and by then, she and her Easter egger friend would always be huddled on top of a cabinet right next to our backyard door. Tonight, I went to go grab the two hens from their usual roosting place on the cabinet and I couldn’t find them. Instead, I found hundreds, maybe thousands of white silkie feathers, scattered in piles around my backyard. Some near the crawlspace entrance, some near the backdoor, and the most right next to and under the coop. I found very very little blood- only 3 feathers out of the hundreds had some blood on them. I also found little boluses of grass, feed, and cooked meat scattered around my yard. I recognized it as food that I had fed to the silkie earlier today, and then I realized that whatever had pulled out her feathers had ripped out her crop, and she had been running away from this predator, all the while dropping food from her torn crop. I looked for her for two hours, I even went into our crawlspace and crawled around for a bit, but I couldn’t find her. She put up a hell of a fight, as there were feathers all over the yard, and not concentrated in one place, and I could track her escape, from the cabinet to the crawlspace to the backdoor, and finally to the coop, where the biggest pile of feathers was. I know it’s wishful thinking, but I keep thinking she may be out there, still alive, but slowly succumbing to her injuries. I am heartbroken and cannot think straight; she is the most personable hen i have, with the most fiery and bold personality. She made such great strides in the mere two weeks I had her. She went from biting me incessantly to running after me all the time and coming immediately when I called. I didn’t think a bird that I had for two weeks would break my heart like this. I know I’m rambling, but I want to know what did this to her. I couldn’t find any body, and because of that, I keep thinking horrible thoughts, that she died a slow and painful death, or that she may even still be alive in My own backyard, but slowly dying. I want to go back out there, because what if??? I don’t know if she was eaten entirely in my backyard, or if she was just toyed with and hunted for sport until she died, alone in the bushes, or if she was dragged away into the predator’s lair and consumed there. What could have done this?? Leave a bunch of feathers, barely any blood, no body? I hope for her sake, that she died quickly and didn’t suffer, but the trail of feathers tells me that can’t be true.
I know exactly how you feel. 
I lost my two favorite 4 1/2 year old hens to a predator a few years back and all that remained were a couple piles of feathers. I blamed myself since I left them out to dustbath while I prepared lunch thinking they'd be safe with the large trees above. The thought of them suffering was unbearable. I did read an internet post that said when an animal has a massive injury at first they are numb and probably do not feel pain. In my case thinking it was either a Hawk or a fox since it was midmorning and only feathers remaining. The week prior a Hawk attempted to attack a hen one early morning. I cried for weeks and my only comfort was repeatedly seeing two butterflies that had their coloring flying around. I felt it was a comforting sign from God.
