Chicken slaughter

I've been putting off reporting this, but I suppose it's time. Our chickens were killed overnight by a predator. All of them.

I went out to the barn Christmas Eve and found 8 dead chickens strewn around the run and inside the barn. One even flew out of the run and got taken over in the field.

They had puncture wounds on their bodies, but they weren't eaten. It looked like they were grabbed on their backs, and whatever it was just held them down and ripped feathers out until they died. Feathers were everywhere, but their skin wasn't terribly torn.

When the hawk killed chickens, it ate the insides. When raccoons killed a chicken, they ripped off the head. This is... something else. We're pretty sure it wasn't wild dogs either, because none of the bodies were eaten or carried away. A cat wouldn't kill 8 birds for fun... maybe one or two.

A have a friend who studied weasels in California, and he's pretty convinced it was a weasel. He says, and google backs this up, weasels are known to kill entire chicken coops for fun. Also, all the eggs were crushed and eaten. He says a weasel would eat the eggs first, then kill the chickens.

So, for those interested in chicken predators, a quick rundown:

Hawks like to eat the crop and intestines.

Raccoons like to rip off the heads and drink the blood. (Ew.)

Dogs will carry off their prey to munch on later, or at least eat some of it.


I'm working on plans to build a coop. I'll be building one in a few weeks. I'm getting an order of baby chicks Feb. 1st... so we'll have eggs again in... 5 months or so. ::Sigh:: The new coop will be tight wire, and we'll make sure they sleep in it at night. The lean-to, even with the barn door shut, isn't tight enough to keep anything but dogs out.

I will update on the baby chick order soon.