Please help me figure this out...thx so much,you all are such nice ppl

[heritagebirds]

Something keeps taking my chickens....the whole bird. I just find feathers here and there, though they kind of made a path. I'm really leaning toward a dog. I just lost my only Java pair this morning. Any ideas?

 

[chicks4kids]

I would guess a dog simply because I had a dog do take a duck of mine and all that I found was a tuft of feathers...just enough to let me know he wasn't coming back.

The dog came from quite a distance too...further than I thought a dog would travel for a duck. My hubby built me a large trap (in my sig lign check out the link)...turns out it was a Bull Mastiff....

Good luck! It sounds like you definitely have a very determined predator there

 

[speckledhen]

Dog, fox or coyote.

 

[heritagebirds]

I was afraid of that... I like the trap, Chicks4Kids, I've seen it before, I guess I need one. Thank you too, speckledhen. Now comes the hard part, what do I do? I've lost so many birds to this @#$% thing, and now my Javas, I've about had it.

Oh, and they took a total of three birds, does that mean three dogs?

 

[chicks4kids]

My guess is just one dog. Take a bird...come back another time...take another bird...come back another night and so on. It's kinda like the stray cat that finds a food dish-it'll be back for sure.

Is there any way for you to secure your birds perhaps in another location until you can trap the thing??

 

[chickensioux]

Quote:
This is what I'm thinking too.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

I think it's more likely to be a fox than a dog.
A fox would carry off one bird to feed on, or to feed it's young, while domestic dogs tend to kill for the thrill of it, and would be more likely to kill more than one at a time

 

[heritagebirds]

I had three go missing at one time...

 

[chicks4kids]

They could have flown off somewhere too in fear.

When the dog took my duck, he could have easily gotten 2 other mallards and a turkey...he only got the one duck. I found the turkey and one of the mallards perching on the highest rail of my back deck and the 2nd mallard was missing. A week later he showed back up and 2 weeks after that the pair of mallards flew away. So keep hope that they may be hiding somewhere

 

[heritagebirds]

Thank you, I will try to hope...there was one patch of black feather, in addition to an orange patch from the other bird that went missing. They were my only Javas, up until two weeks ago when I hatched out some new ones(different color, same breed), but I never got to hatch out any from those two.