What eats heads off of ducks and Chickens

[cmom]

This is an older thread but still pertinent. I had an issue with a GHO. I accidentally caught it. We got it into a cage and called a wildlife rehab who came and got it as they are federally protected. They said they had a release area and it shouldn't be back.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

Just found my 2 ducks, headless I don’t know what animal it was, we have raccoons, foxes and martens

 

[Portugal Muscovy Novice]

I have 10 Muscovy Ducks that live fairly free down by a lake that I have on my property. Nothing ever happens to them and I don't snip their wing feathers (so that they can get away if they need to). Yesterday, I identified two to be slaughtered today for our xmas dinner. Yesterday I placed them outside my chicken coop in the run overnight so that I can easily get hold of them this morning. I snipped their wing feathers (I now think this was a mistake. When I got to the Coop this morning they were both decapitated. Not much blood at all, no struggle from what I can see and no fence penetration but there are small gaps, I mean really small. We do have weasels here in Portugal and foxes but have two Guard dogs that have the run of the property at night and they do a good job of chasing everything away. It was raining for most of the night which meant that the Guard dogs might have been in their house at te time that the attack happened. The chicken run is not covered so I now suspect we must have some sort of areal predators too (nocturnal). I have no idea what caused this since its the first time anything like this has happened in many years. Im so sad about this but more so also worrying about the ducks down by the lake and potentially our new born lambs that's about to be weaned from the mothers. At the moment I think it might have been an owl or a weasel as the only thing missing is the heads and literally nothing else, not even a feather out of place.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

I found out it must have been the fox, a neighbor chased one off the same day my ducks were killed ...and here in Germany, they hide fox vaccine in chicken heads, I don’t know if they prefer the heads or are used to eating heads cos of the vaccine?!

 

[Kathy Fonseca]

Just like title says. Woke up this morning to 3 ducks and 1 chicken with missing heads and a 4th duck with a wounded neck.
They are in a 5ft tall chicken wire enclosure. There is no sign of how the beast got in or out of the pen. There is a tree inside the pen whose canopy touches trees outside the fence.

Seems very strange for an animal to eat the heads and nothing else. All carcasses where left behind intact.
What the heck would do this?

any input would be great!

The same thing happened to me last week I’m worried I have 3 ducks left and one chicken.what do I do to protect the others

 

[TOR]

The same thing happened to me last week I’m worried I have 3 ducks left and one chicken.what do I do to protect the others

put out game camera so you know what it is and chances are it is either a coon or member of the weasel family.

Rule number 1 have coop and run so no predators can get inside, weasel can thru 1 inch hole..coon can reach grab chickens thru fence if hole is big enough..eat the head.

Rule number 2 remove offending animal if continues to be a problem, but there will be more offending animals which goes back to rule number 1.

The offending animal knows there is a food source, it will return. everything likes chicken

There is many ideas traps, reinforcing coops in reference to predators. If you use the search funtion do some reading I think many of your questions can be answered.

Both weasels , coon climb, dig, chew..at this point you do not know what animal it is.

Sorry for your loss, I have been down the same road.

Good Luck

 

[Loving my girls]

Hi Hun,
Sorry to hear of your loss,
We had the same experience with one of our hens, Ingrid, we got home from friends to find her headless. Horribly distressing.
We put it down to birds of prey. Apparently they only eat the head because the feathers are small and the larger feathers cause a problem (the beak is okay though )
We have a lot of owls and buzzards around here and she was white so stood out also they tend to freeze when frightened so
Just reminded by hubby that we put up some upward facing shiney silver coloured windmills which spin in the wind and scare bad birds but not the hens. We haven’t had an incident since.
Hope this helps
Many hugz