Brooke Carson
In the Brooder
On Sunday morning, as we were getting ready for church, we discovered 6 of our 12 chickens dead (2 were decapitated, the others had injuries on the nape of their necks.) A google search suggested raccoons or owls as the culprit. As it happened in the morning and as we thought owls less likely to hunt "for sport" we assumed raccoons. Sunday evening (around 6 pm while it was still quite light out) the owl came back and was hanging around the run. The chickens were super traumatized and won't come out of the coop so there were no more victims. We fixed some weak spots and set a game cam and spent Monday making a better sky cover. Today, I noticed a scabbed over injury that we somehow missed on the neck of one of our chickens. She also appears to have swelling around one eye (the standing up feathers make it look bigger than it is and they lay down flatter with gentle fingering.) She doesn't have any other noticable symptoms. She's eating, drinking, pecking other chickens as much as she used to...as far as we can tell. (she's panting in the pictures because it's the hottest day we've had this summer and the chickens are too traumatized to leave the coop for the cooler areas in the shade... :/ ) When we discovered the dead chickens, she was the only other chicken who had come out of the coop. We have an automatic door on our chicken coop. The door opens around 6:45 am (light activated) and they usually come out as they wish after that so the other 5 who survived the attack were inside still, I think. But she had ventured out and my daughter who discovered the attack found her hiding in a bush and put her back in the coop and shut them all in so that we could clean up the dead and figure out what had happened. We looked her over at that time but I guess we missed this spot? Anyway, is there anything I can/should do for her? (I'm assuming she's a girl because of the hatchery said so... We're new to this and can't tell boys from girls yet.... We had hoped to have chicks eventually from this group but I think the owl ate all our roosters. )
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