What would steal an egg AND a golf ball

[emvickrey]

Quote:
I say a coon. Number one reason is it's too cold for snakes unless you have a heater in your coop and it's living in the bedding.
Second reason is I had this happen to me. I had a fake egg which was actually a small gourd that was about as big as a duck egg. I used that for about 3 years then this summer eggs started coming up missing. Then one morning the fake egg was bitten into and broken. There where teeth marks on it where the coon had made several attempts at eating the "egg". One night I noticed all the chickens out in the run as far away from the coop as they could get. I went to investigate and there was a coon in there. The chickens ever had a mark in them. It was just after the eggs.

So my vote is a coon!

 

[emvickrey]

Quote:
I NEVER reach under a hen. I pick her up. I've read too many stories about finding a snake under there.

 

[D'Angelo N Va.]

how warm does it get during the day? if it warms up nicely...it is probably a snake..if not...well you got me. curious to find out though.

 

[MMPoultryFarms]

This post is going around and around. Your predator is a snake I have stated several times that there still out. I have physically seen 3. Today I saw this guy leaving my front yard.

So in theory it might be to cold for snakes. But that doesn't Explain why there still active. A picture says a thousand words.

 

[merry hens]

Regarding fake eggs being taken, a similar thing happened to me. One time I was cleaning the coop, and had to leave some stuff out overnight (it got dark before I was finished). I left out 3 LARGE (bigger than life-size, and they were yellow, pink and green) HEAVY MARBLE eggs that I had been using as fakes for my hens...the next morning, they were all gone. I always suspected raccoon or skunk - some animal that takes food and stashes it.

 

[rolffamily]

Okay, I think I might be getting closer to finding my egg and golf ball. My coop has a dirt floor with 6 inches of sand on top (the coop rests on a cement frame). The coop is divided by a wall - half for my layers and the other half for meaties in summer which turns into a place for extra feed, etc in winter. Yesterday I spread 2 bales of pine shavings in the layer half for winter, and today I noticed a slight hollowed out area leading under that dividing wall.

Don't know what's in there but wherever the chickens can't get at now looks like a mine field of mouse traps, a rat trap, sticky traps and Just One Bite chunks. No clutter and any feed totes are off the floor. I mean war. Hubby said if I don't catch something in the next couple of days he'll take a shovel and dig whatever it is out and whack it. Unless, of course it is up in that wall someplace. Then he'll just end up making a big mess for nothing, so that's a last resort.

 

[iluvsedward]

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[cmom]

Time for a critter cam. An Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake next to one of my coops.