Robbed Nest. Predators or spiteful neighbors?

[afeatherfan]

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Well did you kill the coyote??I know I sure would have. They killed a lot of my animals.

 

[HLAC]

It's a picture from this site: http://senr.osu.edu/Coyotes_in_the_Backyard.html

I helped these researchers with a raccoon project (in which I killed more than 60 raccoons off of one property) but I didn't mess with the yotes. (However, I did manage to get a coyote with my bow this past deer season.)

 

[Wolf-Kim]

The geese are all accounted for. There were a pile of feathers in the horse pasture, I think from the geese. But none seemed hurt.

Tonight, I came home from work and one of my ganders were limping. I caught him and checked for wounds, couldn't find blood or anything visually wrong.

I know that Black snakes will eat eggs, I just had a hard time seeing a Black Snake eat 15 goose eggs in a single day. I couldn't even carry all the eggs to the nest in one go, I had to make trips.

I have witnessed crows taking chicken eggs. I've always found egg shells, even if they were 100-300 feet away and/or in pieces. I walked out 5 acre pasture surrounding the nest and couldn't find any evidence.

I'm not saying it couldn't have been any of these culprits, just doing some brainstorming.

I'm thinking it was those two dogs, they were spotted again today. A lab mix and a chow mix, both fairly large dogs. I was out setting the traps and I heard them tearing through the neighbors cow pasture straight for our pond, under the cattle fence and both did a flying leap about landing on my Cayuga that were playing in the water.

Then with my gander limping tonight and the pile of goose feathers in the pasture, I'm thinking it's the neighbors dogs. A couple of exciteable dogs, running loose on a neighboring farm. Argh. The neighbors(we don't know them) are within ear shot(I heard them yelling for the dogs, when I started yelling at the dogs who were chasing my ducks), next time the pooches come for a visit, we'll have to fire a few warning shots to send them on their way and give their owner a wake up call.

 

[chickintexas]

Sorry about your eggs. If I saw a neighbor's dogs tearing it up on my property, I would be livid. I live in a pretty tight knit community. We know who's dogs belong to whom. We'll let one another know if a dog gets out, which is extremely rare. Most of the time when we see a dog running the neighborhood, it's a stray. If I caught a stray dog in the act of eating my birds, I'd be getting out the .22.

 

[goosedragon]

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