Viewing post #275690 by earthmom

Skiekitty said:Sad sad sad news. Some how, some way, almost everyone got slaughtered. Friday night, I wasn't home until almost midnight and it had stormed pretty badly. Saturday I was going to take almost 100% of everyone to Kiowa to their annual Animal Swap/Sell. I had planned on selling the black silkie, 2 of the white silkies (keeping the roo & a hen), and the two NH red, keeping the buff. Saturday morning, when I went into their area, which is RIGHT next to my bedroom window, so it had to have happened between 6pm & 12am, that's when I found the carnage. The only birds to survive the disaster was a NH red & the buff. All the silkies & one red NH were literally in pieces everywhere. I won't go into graphic details, but it looked like a horror movie. I'm going to blame either skunks (which I doubt 'cuz I didn't smell any skunk) or the neighbor's cats (which I do believe it could have happened). And because everything is mulched, I couldn't look for tracks to identify what kind of animal did this. Couldn't have been dog / raccoon, had to have been a smaller animal. And wasn't a bird of prey because they wouldn't have shredded all the chickens, they would have taken them back to their nest (I see this regularly.. not to mention birds of prey don't just slaughter for fun and whatever did this, did this for fun).

Toni, I have to tell you I welled up reading this post. I feel your pain - had the same situation with my flock years ago when I lived in a neighborhood in the Springs. Turned out it was a fox. The neighbors had seen one lurking around and one even ran it out of her yard (they told me this later, unfortunately). At the time I had an open top pen and the fox walked along the fence and just jumped on in for a late night chicken snack.

I vowed to never have another open top pen after that. I hope to God I don't get hit now but something that burrows :P So far no problem.

I'm so sorry for your loss.