What type of predator could have caused this? :(

[Naser]

Sorry for your loss
You need to enforce your coop and use electric fence

 

[jspeese]

Could have easily been a dog. Next to hawks, they are the worst predator I've ever had to deal with. You have a nice coop, but I would replace all of the netting and chicken wire with something tougher like hardware cloth or turkey wire. And maybe consider an electric fence for added protection.

 

[Ecatocsc]

Husky is part wolf no doubt your issue. Reinforce your new hardware cloth with studs so holes are too small, talk to your neighbor show them the fur maybe they will be responsible if that didn’t get a good reaction then call police make a report with animal control

 

[Shahnaz13]

I have no answer for you but a heart felt "I'm so sorry" because they were not "just" chickens but family members. Hopefully, all will be well . Hugs from Spain.

 

[Amry]

Do you have raccoons in your area?

Have heard and experienced that racoons just tear their heads off and leave.

 

[woodmort]

Have heard and experienced that racoons just tear their heads off and leave.

Raccoons tend to go for whatever is in the chickens' crops. They will clean these out and, sometimes if they have time, go into the body cavity,

 

[townchicks]

I'm sorry for your loss. I'm glad that you identified the culprit and contacted the owner to work out a resolution. We never know how good our predator proofing is, until we are shown that it isn't good enough. Sharing the experience here will help others, as difficult as it is to go through it, be glad you shared.

 

[ValerieJ]

I want to reach out and thank everyone for their input because it did end up being the two dogs next door and I would not have investigated it any further had I not come here seeking advice. I was going to call animal control but decided that wasn't fair before I actually talked to the neighbor so I did just that. He identified the fur and said that they had escaped before the time that he usually kennels them at night. He said he and his son looked everywhere for them, searching all night and could not find any trace of them. He basically took ownership of all of it and offered to reimburse us for any damages incurred, offering to buy more chickens, even going so far as to say that he would take both of his dogs to the pound if that's what I wanted. Of course that is not what I want. He was VERY distraught, he is an animal lover himself. In this day and age of suing everybody for everything, the fact that he owned up to it was huge to me. My only request was that he try to make sure they don't get loose again and he assured me that he was already making changes to the way that he was containing them. He is in the process of reintroducing them into the house as the only reason they were outside was because his daughter has a newborn and they live with him.

I extended grace yesterday, as we are commanded to do as Christians, in the hopes that we can make this world a little bit of a gentler, kinder, more compassionate place. God bless ya'll and thanks again!

I love that it all ended in good Will between neighbors.

 

[WGHowell]

Dogs can certainly tear hardware cloth like that. We had rabbits at one time and their cages were made with actual fence wire and hardware cloth and they ripped it apart with no problem. Animals are a lot stronger than you would expect and can fit into holes you think are to small, but they can and will.Try hunting a deer you shoot and have to trail it through the woods. Wild animals are especially strong willed. I just did it the other night.That hair did look very much like coon hair, but the hair of a Husky is much like that and a husky is a tame version of the wolf . it is very close kin to one.So it could have been either one. i'd put money on the husky.

 

[SurferchickinSB]

Good afternoon all,

It is with great, great sadness that I write this post. I lost 8 of my 13 pet banties to a predator a couple of days/nights ago and I am still boohooing. Something got into what we thought were coops that were basically impenetrable. We had lost chickens to hawks before because we were free ranging and to the heat (we live in Florida) but have never lost a chicken to anything other than that.

We started chicken keeping about 5 years ago and other than the hawk attacks and one raccoon encounter (we had forgotten to take the food out of the pen at night so it wasn't actually after the chickens) we have had absolutely no attempts on either of our coops even though we are surrounded by woods. When we stopped free ranging so that we could protect our flocks from hawk attacks during the day, we researched coops and from the very beginning didn't make the mistakes that folks usually make starting out and have therefore been able to keep our girls safe at night from day one. Frankly, we built the bigger coop with better siding than what is currently on our house! Until now...

Attached are some pictures of what happened... It appears to have happened somewhere between 2 and 5 am. There were a couple of dead chickens in the coop, several outside of the coop but in the pen and several scattered outside of the pen. And one that had been attacked walking around stunned and with a severe bite mark on her back. I'm trying to save her. The funny thing is, none of them had any signs of obvious trauma, although I was so distraught I never looked under their feathers before I buried them, except for the one that survived and one that was half eaten, abdomen/breast area only, the furthest one away from the coop in the yard.

Now here is the caveat, when my dog alerted from inside the house, I opened the door to let him out and there was a husky standing in the yard accompanied by about a 40 - 50 pound black and white lab mix (my yard is surrounded by picket and farm fence but they were somehow able to open the gate to come into my yard). They were not in either pen when I escorted them out of my yard and walked back around with a flashlight, everything looked in order so here is my hypothesis. It was a fox or a coyote and the commotion drew the dogs to our yard so at this point I am holding them harmless as I just cannot believe that a dog would go in and out of that hole, the big one certainly would not have fit and the smaller one would have had to perform some kind of circus act to balance on the fence and literally chew through what was hardware cloth bolted to the coop and go in and out with chickens.

Oh and I forgot to mention that whatever it was did get into by big coop run area, he just lifted the chicken wire and walked in and proceeded to start biting apart the hardware cloth on the door along with the wood slat across the middle of the door. I don't have pictures of the damage to the big coop but I did attach picture of the coop itself. Thankfully it did not get to the big girls in that coop.

Also, until today, we have had a severe drought for a couple of months and it looks like whatever it was must have been starving.

So my guess is fox/coyote... Certainly it wasn't a dog right? Oh and we found a clump of semi coarse white hair (pic attached) on the chicken wire but no scat or tracks...

I am just so devastated and don't know what else we could have done. I've lost 15 chickens, including the 8 a couple a days ago, over the 5 years, all to predators and each time has been heartbreaking since I make them pets but this is especially so since we thought we had them fully protected.

All thoughts/comments are appreciated!
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That looks like the fur of a light colored husky to me!