Hi. I would really appreciate some help figuring out what's going on here. So, over a month ago, three of our hens were killed on the same day somewhere between 5:30 - 6:30 pm (still light out). They were found by my husband, laying in separate areas of the fenced-in yard. He had already buried them by the time I got home from work, so I couldn't examine their bodies, but my husband said he didn't see any blood or injuries on them, other than some of their feathers were off their bodies. After that happened, we kept our two remaining hens inside their coop for about two weeks in hopes that whatever killed the other hens would move on. I then started letting the two remaining hens out into the yard again, and everything seemed fine for about three weeks. Now tonight when I went to close up the coop, I saw quite a few feathers on the ground underneath a tree close to our house. Luckily, both the hens were inside on their roosting bar, but one of them looked as though some of her tail feathers might be missing, but she seemed ok other than that. She's kind of skittish, so I knew it would be futile to try to inspect her behind. We had one similar incident probably about 8 years ago, where we found one of our hens dead in the same condition as these recent ones, but overall, we've had very few problems with predators. Any ideas as to what could be attacking my chickens?
One was de-feathered, one was decapitated. There was a large pile of feathers in another spot, and three more were just gone.
