Hello, this evening after months with no predation issues at all suddenly we had two or three birds killed. Three birds are missing. One body is in the yard (pics will be in this post!), one was carried off leaving a trail of feathers, and the last is just MIA but no feathers of her color found so she may have just found a good hiding spot when the carnage began.
So here is what we know. Around 1:30am EST this morning 5-30-14, here in New Hampshire, I looked out of our *front door* on the way to another room (our door is half glass) and noticed something on the driveway at the bottom of our front steps. At first I thought it was torn up plastic or something. Looking for a few moments I realized it was feathers from one of our blue laced red splash Wyandotte hens. I told hubby that something got one of the chickens and the investigation began... The first question on our minds was why would there be feathers right up at the house. The chicken coop is not exactly close to the house and if something grabbed one of our girls in the night, it would have had to bring it all the way up to the house, where there is a bright light on the top of the driveway all night AND it's where our 3 big dogs are let out on a regular basis to do their duty so there is always the thick smell of dog there. Add to that that the feathers that appear to be the start of the trail, the assumed ambush point are literally at the bottom of our front steps, 15 feet from our couch in the living room where we had been watching TV all evening/night! Next bizarre bit is that none of our dogs ever barked or made any indication that anything was around outside. Our Pointer mix barks about *everything,* someone closes a car door a quarter mile away and you can be sure Finn would at least growl or let out a low woof to let us know. Tonight he made no indication that anything was out of the ordinary. Going outside with flashlights we see that the feathers starting at our doorstep go down and out the driveway, right past our trail cam! We thought, awesome! We will have a photo... nope, whatever it was that took that bird managed to stick right along a low rock wall at the edge of the driveway and avoid the cam completely. Darn! We headed down to the coop to check our other birds. We had 7 hens when I last saw them at around 8pm tonight. Looking in the coop only 4 birds remain. Missing are two BLR splash Wyandottes and one buff Orp. Not too far from the coop, just outside of the horse barn is the body of the second missing BLRW hen. The scene is very creepy. Her head and neck lay separated from her body very cleanly. Off to one side a wing is also laying separate from the body, quite cleanly dis-articulated. A few feathers are scattered about. No sign of any actual eating of the body. The kill was not very fresh.
All of the evidence points to these birds having been attacked and killed before or right at dark. My birds go straight into the coop when the sky begins to darken and the coop is undisturbed (the floor is dusty and the only prints in the dust are chicken) so I have to assume that they were attacked as they headed in for the night. It can't have been more than a few minutes after I left the barn for the night as it was getting dark when I came back up to the house and the chickens were headed towards the coop at that point, just 10 feet away. It creeps me out to think that whatever did this was probably just out of sight waiting for me to leave. It must have been a very swift attack since when the chickens feel threatened they flock to my colt for protection which would have put them inside an electric fenced area and protected by a good sized young horse who thinks the chickens are his buddies. If they had made it into the paddock he would have protected them fiercely, but they were unable to make it and his paddock is just feet from the entrance to the coop. So we have a very fast twilight attack that killed at least two birds and an attacker bold enough to be waiting for me to leave and to attack one of the birds at the house (presumably she ran up here for safety) without alerting even my most vigilant dog to anything going on!
So without further ado, here are the pics of the crime...
Feathers in relation to our front door, about 400 feet away from the coop, to get from the coop to our door something would have to go considerably out of the way from any property exit.
The body left behind. Body on the left, wing to the right (moved slightly from it's original position, I think hubby flipped it over), head bottom center. No obvious slobbering on the head which I felt would be seen if a canine of some sort grasped it to yank it off. The spot has very little grass growth because last year there was a wooden spool there all summer/fall that killed the plants in that spot, it has nothing to do with the attack itself.
Closer view of the head and neck. Very clean cut.
Her body.
Her wing. Both the bone protruding from the wing and the body where it was removed from show no sign on gnawing or scoring. It appears to have just been cleanly ripped away.
So any clues as to what would be my culprit? We are in a pretty rural spot, we have plenty of potential suspects. Thanks for any help!
We do have the remaining 4 birds closed up now so they are secure in the coop and run. My colt is also locked in for the night since he was quite upset tonight and I don't know what attacked the birds so I can't say for sure that it wouldn't be potentially dangerous to him if it comes back through. We have three trail cams covering the main ways in and out of our yard so with any luck we will get some pics. Two of them were not in operation before tonight. We set them up post attack. We did leave the body in place and mostly undisturbed just in case our culprit plans to return and we may be able to get a line on it.
So here is what we know. Around 1:30am EST this morning 5-30-14, here in New Hampshire, I looked out of our *front door* on the way to another room (our door is half glass) and noticed something on the driveway at the bottom of our front steps. At first I thought it was torn up plastic or something. Looking for a few moments I realized it was feathers from one of our blue laced red splash Wyandotte hens. I told hubby that something got one of the chickens and the investigation began... The first question on our minds was why would there be feathers right up at the house. The chicken coop is not exactly close to the house and if something grabbed one of our girls in the night, it would have had to bring it all the way up to the house, where there is a bright light on the top of the driveway all night AND it's where our 3 big dogs are let out on a regular basis to do their duty so there is always the thick smell of dog there. Add to that that the feathers that appear to be the start of the trail, the assumed ambush point are literally at the bottom of our front steps, 15 feet from our couch in the living room where we had been watching TV all evening/night! Next bizarre bit is that none of our dogs ever barked or made any indication that anything was around outside. Our Pointer mix barks about *everything,* someone closes a car door a quarter mile away and you can be sure Finn would at least growl or let out a low woof to let us know. Tonight he made no indication that anything was out of the ordinary. Going outside with flashlights we see that the feathers starting at our doorstep go down and out the driveway, right past our trail cam! We thought, awesome! We will have a photo... nope, whatever it was that took that bird managed to stick right along a low rock wall at the edge of the driveway and avoid the cam completely. Darn! We headed down to the coop to check our other birds. We had 7 hens when I last saw them at around 8pm tonight. Looking in the coop only 4 birds remain. Missing are two BLR splash Wyandottes and one buff Orp. Not too far from the coop, just outside of the horse barn is the body of the second missing BLRW hen. The scene is very creepy. Her head and neck lay separated from her body very cleanly. Off to one side a wing is also laying separate from the body, quite cleanly dis-articulated. A few feathers are scattered about. No sign of any actual eating of the body. The kill was not very fresh.
All of the evidence points to these birds having been attacked and killed before or right at dark. My birds go straight into the coop when the sky begins to darken and the coop is undisturbed (the floor is dusty and the only prints in the dust are chicken) so I have to assume that they were attacked as they headed in for the night. It can't have been more than a few minutes after I left the barn for the night as it was getting dark when I came back up to the house and the chickens were headed towards the coop at that point, just 10 feet away. It creeps me out to think that whatever did this was probably just out of sight waiting for me to leave. It must have been a very swift attack since when the chickens feel threatened they flock to my colt for protection which would have put them inside an electric fenced area and protected by a good sized young horse who thinks the chickens are his buddies. If they had made it into the paddock he would have protected them fiercely, but they were unable to make it and his paddock is just feet from the entrance to the coop. So we have a very fast twilight attack that killed at least two birds and an attacker bold enough to be waiting for me to leave and to attack one of the birds at the house (presumably she ran up here for safety) without alerting even my most vigilant dog to anything going on!
So without further ado, here are the pics of the crime...
Feathers in relation to our front door, about 400 feet away from the coop, to get from the coop to our door something would have to go considerably out of the way from any property exit.
The body left behind. Body on the left, wing to the right (moved slightly from it's original position, I think hubby flipped it over), head bottom center. No obvious slobbering on the head which I felt would be seen if a canine of some sort grasped it to yank it off. The spot has very little grass growth because last year there was a wooden spool there all summer/fall that killed the plants in that spot, it has nothing to do with the attack itself.
Closer view of the head and neck. Very clean cut.
Her body.
Her wing. Both the bone protruding from the wing and the body where it was removed from show no sign on gnawing or scoring. It appears to have just been cleanly ripped away.
So any clues as to what would be my culprit? We are in a pretty rural spot, we have plenty of potential suspects. Thanks for any help!
We do have the remaining 4 birds closed up now so they are secure in the coop and run. My colt is also locked in for the night since he was quite upset tonight and I don't know what attacked the birds so I can't say for sure that it wouldn't be potentially dangerous to him if it comes back through. We have three trail cams covering the main ways in and out of our yard so with any luck we will get some pics. Two of them were not in operation before tonight. We set them up post attack. We did leave the body in place and mostly undisturbed just in case our culprit plans to return and we may be able to get a line on it.
