I went into my barn today and let my chickens out to free range. when i came back to put them in for the night I found 2 of my chickens dead ( chest ripped open only guts gone) and my rooster completely missing annnd two of my chickens badly injured with only fang marks on their lower chest and blood over their chests. I then found my rooster hidden in a noke in the barn with once again no marks on his body except for two "fang" marks on his chest. I've been told may be a weasel but would like to get more opinions...what predator would prefer only to take their blood? thankfully my two hens have made it thru so far I have removed them from the flock due to the others peckin at them and have been babying them...but what your opinion as to wut is gettin my chickens?????
fang marks? a dog usually kills and mames and lets it lay, foxes grab and go, opossum is happy to eat eggs or chickens, raccoons usually eat the breast and they also reach through the wire and pull heads off, hawks kill and pick the breast and guts, maybe a skunk, weasels tend to go for the throat, my advice is to pen them up and try to watch and see what comes around, get a live trap and bait it with a piece of the dead chicken, make sure you have your 22 when you check the trap in the morning, sorry for your lose but i lived in the woods for a long while and know that wildlife think chickens are the best eating!
Why bother carrying a 22, bring your shot gun....in the heat of pulling the trigger most people will miss. I would rather increase my odds with a shot gun. As far as what killed the birds in the day time....my vote is a dog. HappyHatch'en
I had a coyote get our chicks when they were about 6 weeks old. They were out in the flower garden, just in front of their coop, in the afternoon. When I went to lock them in, a couple of them were missing. A day or two later, I was out with them, and went to tend to my kids for just a few minutes, and when I came back, it was eerily silent. No chickens. But there were feathers in the coop, and a big pile of poop! Can you imagine the rudeness!?? The reason I know it was a coyote is because the following day, around noon time, I looked out the window and saw the coyote walking around the coop. He obviously had come back for another snack.
From what I.ve seen raising chickens out in the country I would say a cat killed your chickens. A weasel kills them at the throat eats that portion however oppossum start at the rear eating the bird. Cats well they slaughter eating stomach .
An excellent paper on poultry predators was posted by Ohio State University: http://ohioline.osu.edu/vme-fact/0022.html. It will help you analyze the "crime scene" and figure out what's after your flock! My money's on a possum. A raccoon tends to grab the bird and run. Dogs kill and drop; they don't eat the birds. A possum goes for the soft insides and generally leaves the uneaten parts in the coop (they don't carry their prey off). A cat will carry the bird off, but you'll find feathers everywhere... they like to play with their food before they eat it. I have some experience with predators, having killed 4 raccoons, 2 possums, and a bobcat just last year. (Would have had a couple of dogs too, but they were running too fast!) Kathy in Texas
