Predator kills all chickens at one time.

[HLAC]

Many predators will keep killing until there's nothing left moving.

The fact that your birds were covered with staw makes me suspect it might have been a bobcat.

 

[trinityfly]

We have had two predators invade our chicken house with the same results as you found in yours. Skunk then later a Ring tailed cat (member of weasel family but large) Sorry for your loss. Is your hen house now critter safe?

 

[twentynine]

mink

What part of our great state are you from?

I am in SE La. 20 miles south of BR, area called Galvez.

 

[rufus]

Sounds like a bob cat to me. Were there any tracks in or around the coop?

And about the badger, I never thought we would have badgers in Arizona, but about 1962 my brother went hunting up on the Kaibab. They spent the night playing cards with the people camped along side them. One fellow put up a "tame badger" as a bet. And with our luck, my brother won it.

The critter was in two metal crates wired together. When he got back to Phoenix, we suddenly discovered the badger was not all that tame. It was always in a nasty mood. It would hiss at and bite anything.

It tried to dig out of the cage, but we slid a bit of boiler plate under it.

Finally, my dad got tired of the foul beast, and he unlocked to door to the cage and ran for the back door. The critter was gone, and we never saw it again. But for about three years, all of the house cats in the neighborhood disappeared.

I know for a fact that there was at least one badger in Arizona.

Rufus