So this has really blown my mind. I have worked at numerous state parks and zoos and feel like I am pretty confidant with animal tracking. Yet something has got me baffled. This is my first year with chickens so I am hoping some of the more knowledgeable people on here can give me some insight. I have a large deep litter/open air coop. No run and birds free range with the exception of the little ones. The opening for the coop is about 3 foot off the ground and no ramp. the birds just hop on in. and then it is about a two foot drop to the bottom of the coop. The door area is 3x3. The floor is corn cob bedding than has broken down into sawdust consistancy with a thin layer of straw that the girls keep kicking out of thier nest boxes. So at 2:30 I come to collect eggs and all is well. Two of my newer girls that I just got a couple weeks ago still hang out in the coop and do not free range yet. They are young standard cochins about 3 or 4 lbs and were raised in a box in a shed until I got them so scratching and roosting and some other chicken behaviors are still new to them. Well I go in the house to do chores and I dont hear much of anything. Around 3:30 I come back outside and my dominant hen is the the box laying and there is a thin layer of feathers all around the coop floor and my cochins are no where to be seen. At first my thoughts are the dominant hen didnt want them in there while she was laying and had a little battle. Well I find one cochin as I am heading to my car but she is alone, and that is odd because these two girls were like glued together. So I start looking in the area for the other one worried that she is hurt. About 10 foot directly in front of the coop near thier brush that they hide in is just a couple feathers. Then I find about 6 foot behind the coop directly under a tree like shrub near the trunk is a huuuuuuge pile of feathers. And this is only 4 foot away from a dog run with 3 obnoxious hunting dogs in one direction and 5 foot in the other direction is a boser on a 50 foot leed. Whatever went on right there had no fear of dogs. So I get worried and go back around and I see no tracks or ground disturbance of any kind. I would think the amount of feathers in the coop with the corn cob bedding would show signs of a scuffle. No blood, no prints, no feathers scattered around, just in piles, in broad daylight. So I wander up throught my neighbor(read: parents) yard. Nothing there. Probably about 50-75 feet of clear open yard. Then when I go behind my parents house, a good 100 feet away from the coop, where our chickens never go. There is about 15 feathers in a sparse trail along the tree line that borders thier back yard. I follow it deeper in the woods and nothing!! I am really at a loss. I want to prevent this from happening again but it would help to know what is was. I cant think of anything that would come into a coop in broad daylight and leave no tracks. Any ideas?
