Missing a bird: Any ideas?

[togby2006]

We were doing a head count the other day and are a bird short. There is no sign of any struggle. No blood, no feathers nothing. She is just gone. There are no tracks in the snow around the coop. We can find nothing in our woods. We are thinking that it is probably a bird of prey. The chicken was a 5-6 month Ancona. Any other ideas?

 

[skunknchatter]

I had the same thing one year. Sadly I found her the following summer wedged behind the feed barrel. Got stuck between it and the fence. About the same age as yours. Check every tight space. Chickens are not real smart.

 

[togby2006]

Went out to search again and make sure we just hadn't missed her. Found a small patch of blood on the ground with a little bit on the hay outside the run. Still don't know what got her though.

 

[skunknchatter]

We have turkey vultures here and they'll pick up a full grown laying hen if you aren't careful. I have to keep a close eye on my flock because I have a pair of vultures in a 50' pine tree next to my property. Sorry about your pullet. I strung bailing twine across the top of my coop (back and forth in an "zig-zag" pattern) to keep big birds from swooping in.

 

[FireTigeris]

Turkey vultures are not predators, they are scavengers.

 

[ragerkid2]

I had a bird go missing one night last fall. She showed up the next day thankfully. Then last week I had two go missing. No blood no tracks nothing. I was assuming they would come back like the others. But then the next night, another 2 birds went missing. And the night after that, another single bird went missing. And after I took my dog out to search, we found a little bit of blood on my porch. Which is weird because the birds got up on the railing and decided they wanted to stay there that night. (I'm assuming they were scared.) But I wasn't to happy about the idea scence all my birds were going missing! So I put them all in the coop. Then my neighbor saw a fox back in the woods. And there is fox tracks leading right up to the coop. Now we have fox traps set up. Hoping they work.