Please tell me what happened**Update 6/17**

[kagedgoddess]

wow i tried searching for your thread earlier cuz i was wondering if you had ever solved this and i just missed it.
i am sorry this happened, but glad you found your answer.... still... it'd be great if you actually found it to remove all doubt.

 

[smiley]

I know. I wish we had found it too.

It would ease my mind more to actually see it. Although, it would freak me out more as well. *sigh*

We will put the wire mesh over the opening and cross our fingers that was the problem.

However, I am still keeping the new chicks upstairs....that's a definite.

This whole thing has just been a nightmare. Whenever I picture the girls getting eating it just shakes me up.

So, for now, I have nothing else to go on except what the pest removal guy said.....

 

[noitulover]

i just stumbled across this thread and read all 8 pages! i am soooo sorry for your loss! but i would believe the man that said it was the snake...

we had just put our 3 six week old babies out in a sectioned off portion of the outdoor coop (and this coop is very secure!) and when my fiance went out to check them in the morning, he found a 7' long black snake that had fully eaten our SIX WEEK OLD RIR BABY! i mean, this was no small bantam, but an almost fully feathered Rhode Island Red! The snake had also killed our Golden Sebright bantam and was about to kill our Black Australorp Bantam. My fiance killed the snake. (What was even sadder, is that our Golden Sebright had tried to fight back. She had pecked a couple of bloody holes in the snake!)

long story short, we found TWO HOLES in the coop, no bigger than 3/4". We searched and searched that coop for ANYTHING else. and it had to have been one of those holes that was smaller than an inch. this snake was VERY big too.

I would assume that what got your chicks was a snake.

I am VERY sorry for your loss though, I know how hard it is.

 

[smiley]

Quote:
Thank you for taking the time to share your story. I, too, am very sorry for your loss. That is so sad. I can't believe he got a 6 week old chick. Man, that's just crazy. My girls were only 5 days old......

I feel more confident now after reading your post that the pest removal guy was, indeed, correct. I just wish we had also caught him in the act so we could have saved the girls and terminated the snake.

Again, I am also sorry for your loss and I thank you for taking the time to post your experience.

 

[gardenak]

I have read through all 8 pages, and I'm really sorry about your loss. I do have to go back to the human factor though. After Googling sankes found in New England, I did see a few species that could get big enough to eat 5 babies, but snakes don't really do that. they'd eat maybe one or 2 and be done. IF there was a snake big enough to eat all 5 at once were in the area, it sure as heck wouldn't be able to get through a 1" hole in the mesh in the first place-it would have to be a much smaller snake which brings us back to 1 or possibly 2 babies at most. That said- I don't think it is a joke at all. Someone wanted those chicks and had to have known they were there. A burgler would have gone in looking for money etc., so this makes me think neighborhood kid that wanted chicks and had no way to get themselves to a feed store to get their own. In any case, get another dog or some sort of security system. Just my HO.

And,

from AK- wish it were under better circumstances.

 

[warmwater]

Hello, I just read all 8 pages and if a snake did come in through the basement drain (that had a cover on it) and ate all your peeps, then he is very full. From some of your responses they say it will not be hungry for quite sometime. MY question is...where is the snake now???? I'm sure it did not lift the cover and go back into the drain......If I were you, I would have someone come in and look in the crawl spaces you said you have in the basement....it could be sleeping down there until it gets hungry again. I have a broody hen sitting on some eggs now....she is in her own cage in the hen house.....I'm going to bring her and the peeps in the day their born! Sorry about your little girls.

 

[California Ducken]

Um, I have been reading the posts here and if the chicks were in a different brooder, I would say yes a snake ate them.
Yes a snake could eat them, no the snake could not get out after eating them. I have raised and fed both. They snake would usually go find a warm spot to digest it's meal and would have probably stayed in the brooder, being that it would be to large to fit back through the bars.
Just my opinion.
I'm sorry for your chickies.....and your doggie too!!

 

[smiley]

Oh, man. I guess I am back to square one now!!! Argh!!!

I guess we'll never know....that's the part that bugs me so much.