I had drill this weekend and of course that would be when something decides to get into my quail pen. I opened the gate at about 5am Sunday morning, still half-asleep, just to have something jump from the window ledge past my face. I found three dead quail and the netting that lines the fence torn down. I spent the next hour with a flashlight and a net and found over a dozen escaped birds, including one little white hen that flew up on top of the house. I fixed the netting and put some wire over where I thought whatever it was had gotten in, then set a trap with one of my dead birds inside.
Then last night I was up late finishing some homework and took the dogs out before I was going to go to bed. On a whim I decided to walk over to the quail pen and heard what sounded like a Sasquatch thrashing around in it. I ran inside to grab a light and a gun and came back out to find a huge nasty feral cat trying to escape. I took a shot at it and missed and I could kick myself for not grabbing the shotgun. Apparently it had climbed the tree next to the pen, pulled back the netting that covers the top of it and was having a fine time killing my birds. It wasn't even eating them, just killing them for sport. I rounded up the survivors and put them into my small pen in the garden. Several had injuries, but nothing that shouldn't heal in a few days.
I think a can of tuna, a shotgun and a lawn chair will take care of the immediate problem, but I ordered some heavier netting online to put over what I already have. I bought a big enough piece that I should be able to bring the edge down over the top of the fence and secure it about a foot or so down. I just feel sick that it was able to get in and do so much damage. These were young quail, all different colors, just starting to lay. I ended up losing two little golden males, a white and a Tibetan, plus however many escaped that I wasn't able to recapture.
