WHERE'S MY CHICKENS HEAD!!!!!

[Greasydog26]

Bad news on the homestead tonight. Went to shut up the chickens and one of them was

missing. Went and found that it was over the hill DEAD!!! Her head was missing and down into her neck and back had been eaten. Any ideas on what the predator was?

 

[Matilda hen]

Where do you live? I'd put my money on a Pine Martin or Mink...First year I had chickens , my best hens neck was cleanly tore off , body left in a dried up dicth...never did find Rosies poor head , at least the day before it happned , I put an egg of hers into the bator!

 

[Greasydog26]

I live in West Virginia. My wife had seen a hawk that evening and pretty sure that is who the perpatrator was...Sucks.

 

[jermoatc]

I have heard that racoons and skunks also will only eat the heads off of chickens. Sorry for your loss.

 

[Matilda hen]

Ya , i suppose , you said the back was eaten off , the hawks might have done that while pinning it the ground , so sorry that it happned at all!

 

[Greasydog26]

Thanks guys she was a good chicken blue laced wyantdotte. Had just started to lay eggs.

But, the hawks were there long before my chickens were. The thing I dont get is her head was totally gone. It's crazy to think that a hawk could have done that.

 

[Sleepy71]

I found a be-headed hen in my coop yesterday. But, the weird thing is that the bare neck was sticking through the coop fencing so that the "eaten" part was outside the coop. The only reason a bird sticks their head through the fencing is if they're freaked out, trying to evade a predator. I don't know what time of day this happened, but I didn't notice it right after I closed them up for the night on Sunday.

 

[Frizzle13]

In England it would have almost defiantly been a fox. We had some hens taken by a hawk and it took all the birds and left nothing behind.