I am absolutely sick to my stomach right now. Something is making off with our chickens and I can't figure out out. We were letting them free range, and one evening I noticed we were down to 11 of our younger birds down from 12. I was sad, but we were prepared that this could happen free ranging. The next day two more were gone. No sign of the bird, no feathers nothing. Rather than losing everything I left the birds in their run today, and we covered the run with being, figuring perhaps we had a hawk, the chicks are 6 and 7 weeks, so still small. Tonight I went out to put the girls to bed, and we were down to 6 chicks. One was dead under the coop, it looked like her neck was snapped, but no blood that I could see and no missing feathers, and two more were just gone. We do have some small snakes that I've seen in our garden, but I can't imagine that they would be big enough to make of with a whole chick. I'm sure we must have train's and such, something keeps trying to get into the compost, but I've never seen it, and the birds are disappearing during the day, not night. I can't find any evidence of the birds, although we do live in the dense forest area, so the poor bodies could be somewhere out there.
