What Kills it, Drags it, but doesn't eat it and is probably BIG?

[woodmort]

Becky89* :

Quote:
I might be wrong but I am thinking it could be a wiesel.....They always leave a lifeless body behind. I've had something similar to this happen before only it took 2 of my birds before I caught it in my box trap.... I don't think a dog would leave evidence....I think it would carry it off to.....

Read the description again--weasels kill quickly with not a lot of feathers scattered around. Dogs will eat a bite or two and leave the rest--trust me I've seen enough of it to know.​

 

[theFox]

Quote:
I might be wrong but I am thinking it could be a wiesel.....They always leave a lifeless body behind. I've had something similar to this happen before only it took 2 of my birds before I caught it in my box trap.... I don't think a dog would leave evidence....I think it would carry it off to.....

Read the description again--weasels kill quickly with not a lot of feathers scattered around. Dogs will eat a bite or two and leave the rest--trust me I've seen enough of it to know.

Some dogs don't eat any of the bird, they just shake them to death, drop them, and go for another. Frequently leaving some feathers scattered around.

 

[DragonEggs]

One of my co-workers seems to think it was a hawk. I know we have a hawk problem around here and they have killed a few of my birds in the past, but always smaller ones, silkies and chicks and such, and I always find the bird laying face down with its back tore up, this boy was laying in aweird crumpled manner on his side. She thinks the hawk managed to kill it or damage it enough that he was able to hop along a few feet before dropping dead but the bird was too big for the hawk to carry off.

Dog still sounds most possible.

Here are pics of the crime scene:

Thats the piles of feathers. You can see the trail slightly in the upper left corner.

Thats the trail of feathers. You can see where it goes up over the mound and down into the ditch and that was where I found his body.

I didnt take pics of the body because that would require hopping the barbed wire fence again which wasnt fun last time. I'll do it tomorrow.

 

[theFox]

A member of the canine family, dog, fox, coyote, or wolf. With the domesticated dog being first on my list.

 

[WisconsinChickenWhisperer]

I'm also thinking dog........would a hawk attack have left so many feathers scattered around? I'm asking because I haven't had any experience with hawk attacks, so I really don't know-but I have seen dogs kill for sport, and this seems like dog to me........If it were a smaller bird, I'd even say someones cat: a friend of mine is having some problems with feral cats killing her banty's........

 

[Desert Peep]

Earlier this summer my dog Bella killed all 8 of my 2 month old chickens and left them strewn all over the run and yard. She made a hole through a chain link fence into the run and went around picking them off one by one. Not any real damage to the birds, but feathers everywhere. She dragged 5 of them out of the run and left them in the yard. And she buried 2 of them!! Now we have a hot wire around the run, and after getting zapped just once, Bella hasn't been over to that side of the yard

 

[DragonEggs]

Well, I was going to get a shot of the corpse today but some kind creaturefelt the need to drag the body back over the trench and drop it just on the other side of my fence and drive my dogs crazy.

 

[Tala]

Well in my experience, I've had plenty of raccoons drag a bird out of the pen, leave it about 10ft away and eat very little of it, (a little of the head or neck maybe but not the body) and they left plenty of feathers around.
But if you think the attack happened during the day, I'd agree with the dog consensus.

Since something returned to move the body around closer to your dog's fence I DO think it was a dog playing with it, because in my experience other scavengers usually take the body away and/or eat it up.

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

I'd say dog too, they tend to pull out all the feathers and leave the bodies.

 

[Dead Rabbit]

definitly a dog playing. not yet with a taste for raw meat. a hawk doesnt do this as pictured, and any other natural predator woulda drug it off and ate it. they normally attack at night, even though i had a fox this yr. steal quite a few, during the AM hrs......never woulda believed it if i hadnt seen it myself.