What eats JUST the head?

[mbakerins]

Raccoon. they eat the heads and drink the blood

 

[wpalmisano]

Often I will find a headless pheasant and the reason is that the netting I use over their flight pen has 2 inch holes. A hawk or owl will fly over and panic them to the point of flight and of course when the head and neck come up through the netting, they snatch the head off. If your Roo found a place to hide but left his head sticking out, that would do it.

 

[wistlindixie]

Quote:
Ughhh STUPID weasel! I don't even like his name....weeeasel. :-( Ok, I guess he's gotta eat....but not MY birds! There are plenty of rats to eat. He should have a rat.

 

[wistlindixie]

Oh I forgot to mention, there were no feathers indicating a sign of struggle....just the head missing. Fairly young RIR rooster with not much hiding experience under his wings. Whatever it was overtook him with no struggle.

 

[wildblueWildfowlunlimited]

Sorry to hear you lost a bird

I with almost certainty will say Great Horned Owl. Its happened to my flock several times, Last summer an owl took out one of my Mama hens as she was leading her 12 babies to the coup in the afternoon. That same owl took the heads off three other hens of mine during the same time period until I "caught" him in the act. Weasles generally will bite the neck on a chicken, kill it and then move on to another, no way possible for a weasle to eat entire heads off multiple birds, Coons perhaps but IMO Owls are the headhunters that eat the head and leave the rest, most times anyways. TRUST me now though when I say if he did it once he will do it again!! Right now Great Horned owls are nesting and may even be feeding young, I had my prize Old English rooster hauled off by an owl three days ago, He did esape the talons three hundred yards off BUT the damage had been done.

Be attentive as Owls are opportune killers and if they find "easy pickens" they will return.

 

[Lacrystol]

Quote:
RACCOON, they eat the head because I was told this is how they store fat. I had what I thought was a raccoon come into my coop and killed over 50 of my chickens, it was a horrible horrible site. All these dead chickens EVERY WHERE without heads. You could tell they tried very hard to get away but being cooped up there's not a lot of places you can go.

After that night, we stayed up everynight and sure enough at about 4:00 in the morning here comes not just 1 raccoon but 3 of them. Came back for seconds, well needless to say they got to meet the end of a barrel.

Another one of them even came back during the day time... I was told that if a raccoon comes around in the day time it usually means they have rabies. Don't know if this is true or not but they are all in heaven now, so I hope they are getting along with all my chickens.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed watching those raccoons come up to our house eating the cat food, they are adorable, but after that night and every since, they quickly lost there cuteness..

Yes, that's right they could come up to the house and eat allll the cat food they want, if they ran out I would give them more, did this so they wouldn't be hungry for my chickens, WELL i was wrong, a huge lesson was learned. No more leaving cat food out.. Which is fine they save me money now.

 

[LaurelRidgeDreams]

Quote:
How about 1/2 " hardware cloth. Weasels can't get through that can they?

 

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

Okay, not to be the voice of disagreement here, but it seems like many people keep saying owl, weasel, raccoon... these are nocturnal hunters. The op clearly said it happened in the DAYTIME. I still say dog although hawk could be possible but usually there are feathers "exploded" in a pile around a hawk attack. Dogs will often only take the head as their whole intent in the attack is to "play with" the prey and kill then leave it lying. Dogs aren't usually hungry enough to actually eat the chickens they kill. They are doing it for sport. Other predators that are wild are actually killing for food and will thereby eat what they kill.

 

[sourland]

Although they are primarily nocturnal hunters, owls if hungry enough will hunt at daybreak, dusk or on overcast days. Right now they are hungry because they have either eggs or young in the nest.

 

[BarnGoddess01]

I've dealt with 2 raccoons here this winter - both during broad daylight. Cocky little buggers too. Bold as brass. Not a thing wrong with them except being hungry, I suspect. I also have a friend that's having a heck of a time with a desperate owl - also during the daytime. I guess these usually nocturnal predators will resort to desperate measures when the need arises.