Need Poultry CSI for this mystery.. UPDATE PG 5

[mudhen]

bletch.... no no no, it can't be .... yuck.... I don't even want to believe this.....

 

[Sunny the Hippie Chick]

Looks like to me I see chain link fence. Squirrels and rats can fit through that. Then all they have to do is walk up the ramp. I used to have a pet rat. It could fit through a hole slightly larger than a quarter. That is until it ate to much and got a bit fat. lol

 

[lichick28]

No one likes rats in their coop, but you cant be in denial about it. Rats can also run off with chicks. Research the best way you want to handle it.

 

[sandypaws]

laugh all you want.. we have huge bushytailed ground squirrls, i have seen moving eggs... what they were gonna DO with them i dont know.. but i have seen them steal eggs....
and they would dig a hole right INTO the coop,,,,

yeah.. a big ol gross RAT, CAN squeeze through THAT fence very easily.. so could a squirrel..
get some traps out (live traps) so it wont hurt your chickens if they set it off

 

[mjdtexan]

Ive seen members here post about the chickens themselves moving the fake eggs to other nesting boxes. I read that recently though.

By the way, I like the way you have your gangplank set up with a little roof over it.

Mike D

 

[davidb]

I smell a Rat

 

[Laskaland]

Pixies? Gnomes?

 

[Bock_Bock]

did you look at the wooden egg to see of you could see any bite marks? that can help tell the story

 

[CovenantCreek]

If you ever get your mystery figured out maybe you can help with mine -- I lost 5 ceramic eggs out of one of my coops. They didn't just wander outside, they disappeared completely. Since I had a skunk den behind my barn I'm guessing one of them would grab an egg at night and take it back to the den. Maybe someday I'll move the shed that covers the den and see if they're in there.

 

[dancingbear]

When I had several broodies at once, I found out that hens can indeed move eggs around. I mark and date eggs when I let a hen have a clutch to hatch. That way, I know which ones belong together, if anything weird happens. With chickens, something weird happens all the time. Anyway, I check the nests daily when I have broodies, to remove new eggs other hens have laid, and to remove any broken eggs. When hens kept coming up with the wrong number of marked eggs in their nests, I checked dates, and found that one of them was stealing eggs from other nests, and putting them with hers!

I never saw them do this, but somebody else said she'd seen a hen tuck an egg under her chin and carry it off.

I had a bunch of wooden eggs once, too, and they disappeared. Later, I found some of them out in the yard, by the driveway. I don't know if she went in and got them, or if the hens tossed them out, then she found them, but my dog Cleo had taken them to play with. Dandy dog toys, those wooden eggs!