Chicken found dead this evening when locking up in the coop/pen. They have a fenced pen about 200' x 200' during the day. No holes under the fence, electric wires on the outside and top of chainlink are hot & working, would a raptor do this? We've had what I presumed were 2 hawk kills back in Nov/Dec and I decorated the area with lots of shiny pie plates and such and nothing since. Those two hens had been torn apart and had been feasted on and we found them fairly soon after the incident. The one today only had the feathers, skin and meat stripped off from beak to breastbone, "nibbled on" rather than torn up. What creature cleans the head & neck like this? I spent a minute thinking the chickens could have done this as they weren't traumatized this evening. The days after the hawk attacks they didn't want to leave the coop for a week. Today they weren't acting like that. The chicken who died did not act sick, has been laying regularly and laid an egg yesterday. Also, I'd think if the chickens did this they would eat the contents of the crop but that was found on the ground near the dead bird. Mixed flock of (now) 13 ten-month old pullets and one 7 year old hen. No rooster.
