Opossum attacked our ducks

[Learningstill]

Glad you got that sucker.

Haha, us too! Thanks

 

[drumstick diva]

opossums are as nasty as they are ughly.

 

[Sara Ranch]

*hugs*

Do you have any pictures of the wounds?

 

[PA2FLgirl]

This post is a little old but i had the same thing happen to one of the female muscovies that live in the neighborhood. Actually 3 females were killed but only one had the butt bit off. It was very traumatizing till this day i wish i hadnt seen it. The worse of it was she was still alive walking around, the other muscovies had shunned her and the crows started pecking at her im assuming because she was also missing her eyes. Im sorry to be so graphic. It puts tears in my eyes every time i think about her and how she suffered.

They were always attacked during the early morning around 4 or 5am and they were always nesting. We couldnt figure out what had attacked them but now hearing the story of the opossum im betting that was the culprit. I hadn't seen any until recently. I was thinking it was a raccoon because that was the only predator i had seen up until a couple of months ago.

There's only one female left and she was so traumatized that she wants nothing to do with mating and babies. She's now a bit of a tomboy and runs around with the males.

Two days ago a mama showed up in our yard with 12 adorable ducklings, she raised some in our yard last year and made it out with 4. She hasnt been back until recently and im scared the opossum will attack her and the ducklings. It has been in our yard a couple of times eating grass and hasnt bothered any of the muscovies sleeping. It actually steers clear of them but last night it showed up when mama and babies were in our yard. It didnt attack her, she made sure to run away with the ducklings and once i noticed the commotion i went out and chased him away. He came back about 30mins later and went back to his grazing routine than showed up again a couple hours later. Again mama got scared and moved and again i chased him off. Im just scared of what will happen when im not there too help her. Should i capture the murderer or kill it. I know there's more than one and i do not like to kill any animals but i dont want to find mama and/or her ducklings dead. (Sorry for the extremely long post)
(Lil Mama and duckling)

 

[Gottaluvthat]

Sweet pic of mama and duckling.
Makes me think I need to relocate the opossum thats been coming in my backyard every night.

 

[glassdragonfly]

We have never had opossums kill,They do clean up the mess that raccoons make.We leave the opossums and get rid of the raccoons and have no problems.I suppose they could kill a duck but with more than one injured I would lean toward raccoons.Hope you did get the culprit.

 

[cmom]

I had a possum kill a bird. It dug under a fence before I put the electric wire up around my coops and pens. I put traps out and caught it the next night where it had dug under the fence the night before. If you do catch it, please eliminate it don't relocate it and give someone else a headache. We are rural on a dead end road and people have dropped off their catches in my area. I realize this wasn't a predator but someone dropped off a gosling in my driveway. I didn't have geese and gave it to someone who wanted it. I thought it was a duckling but it was a big duckling.

 

[glassdragonfly]

I had a possum kill a bird. It dug under a fence before I put the electric wire up around my coops and pens. I put traps out and caught it the next night where it had dug under the fence the night before. If you do catch it, please eliminate it don't relocate it and give someone else a headache. We are rural on a dead end road and people have dropped off their catches in my area. I realize this wasn't a predator but someone dropped off a gosling in my driveway. I didn't have geese and gave it to someone who wanted it. I thought it was a duckling but it was a big duckling.
View attachment 1933889

He's cute!Glad you found a good home for him!

 

[franben2022]

So, I am writing this for informational purposes. We have been doing lots of research on what may have been attacking our ducks. Why? Well, we just lost one of our beautiful saxony drakes and one of our silver Appleyard ducks was injured.
We were shocked that our big boy (RIP Pinestone ) was not only killed but his injuries were a bit perplexing. He had a blood spot on each side of his neck/head area and his rear end had been eaten. I looked into his body cavity and his intestines were missing, but his liver was still there. His breasts were untouched! No feather mess or pieces of flesh or reminents of his intestines. Weird, right?
We then inspected the rest of the flock and found another duck with a bite on her rear end too. The bite was as if something had it's head sideways and took a bite under her tail feathers.
We immediately started to research and located many articles on predator identification. Those articles are precisely what prompted our story being shared with all of you.
We caught our predator when it came back for our beloved boy... Dun dun dun..
It was a opossum!!! What the heck? We were shocked, but thought our traumatic experience may help others identify their predator if they knew that opossums not only attack ducks, but that they can kill one as big as of saxony drake! Hope this helps someone out there!

This really helped us. We lost a white drake a brown silky ckicken and two other chickens last week. They suffered the same bites and horrible demise, and haven’t slept good for nights now, up several times a night, checking on remaining survivors. One has similar bites as you described, that survived and I’m treating the poor duck. We do und a possum last night and wondered if this is our killer? This article sure helps clarify that this just might be the ugly murderer! Was there only one that did all your damage? With all we lost sees like there must be more.

 

[Hcremeans]

Just wanted to update as it has been sometime since we caught the opossum. He was the culprit as we have not had any issue since his capture. Since he also injured one of our ducks, if it were not him, I would assume the predator would return to finish the job and that did not happen.
For anyone wondering, her wounds healed nicely and she is her healthy self again

This just happened to us last night- a sideways bite on the tail of our Indian runner. You said it healed- do u recall how you treated it ?