Missing bird after fox encounter

[TracyMom22]

Hello,
I hope I’m posting in the correCt place.

We let our 5 chickens out to roam for a while in the morning and after dinner. We are there with them, but they walk away some. We are in a wooded area in Maryland. This morning around 7:30 suddenly a lot of ferocious clucking on the other side of a group of trees. Then suddenly, FOX went trotting along our drive. There was nothing in its mouth. Both my husband and I were outside running and shouting, trying to scare the fox.
Long story short, 1 of our hens is now missing. We see no feathers, blood or anything. We’ve looked into the trees, but it’s very hard to do it a LOT because of all the thorns in our wooded area. All day we’ve looked and clucked and called out.

Its now bed time for them and we expecting the worst, but I was wondering if there was anything we should be doing. We’ve only had our ‘babies’ about 4 months, so we are new at this.
Thank you,
Tracy in Maryland

 

[SmiYa0126]

Hello,
I hope I’m posting in the correCt place.

We let our 5 chickens out to roam for a while in the morning and after dinner. We are there with them, but they walk away some. We are in a wooded area in Maryland. This morning around 7:30 suddenly a lot of ferocious clucking on the other side of a group of trees. Then suddenly, FOX went trotting along our drive. There was nothing in its mouth. Both my husband and I were outside running and shouting, trying to scare the fox.
Long story short, 1 of our hens is now missing. We see no feathers, blood or anything. We’ve looked into the trees, but it’s very hard to do it a LOT because of all the thorns in our wooded area. All day we’ve looked and clucked and called out.

Its now bed time for them and we expecting the worst, but I was wondering if there was anything we should be doing. We’ve only had our ‘babies’ about 4 months, so we are new at this.
Thank you,
Tracy in Maryland

She may be hiding, I had a hawk attack and they all scattered, walk around the area and call to her. She may come out.

 

[SilverBirds]

So sorry to here. How are the others doing? If she is alive, she's easy pickings for a predator. Hopefully she's hunkered down somewhere and will reappear tomorrow or in the next few days.

 

[Caw]

Had a couple missing after a recent fox attack. One showed up within the hour (albeit missing a large chunk of skin). The other I hunted hours for before finding her sitting in some tall grass by the road. She seemed to have pulled a muscle running and couldn’t walk more than a few steps at the time. Probably wouldn’t have seen her if she wasn’t white. If you have any grown up area she could be in it might be worth checking there.

 

[TracyMom22]

So sorry to here. How are the others doing? If she is alive, she's easy pickings for a predator. Hopefully she's hunkered down somewhere and will reappear tomorrow or in the next few days.

I’ll certainly look, then. The others seemed uneasy last night. Normally they willingly go up into their coop around 730 or 8, but they kept staying down, and I had to physically put them up there and close the door. They also seem very chatty, much more than normal.

 

[SmiYa0126]

Did she come back?

 

[TracyMom22]

Did she come back?

I’m afraid not. Our hearts are so crushed. Our rural neighbor I met (because of this) has about 20 chickens and lets them run free every day from 1 pm till a certain time. They say they never see foxes. I’m re-thinking a lot of things at the moment. Going to figure out a better run, too!