horror in the chicken house

Sorry to hear about your loss! What a mess to wake up to. My personal experience, a raccoon will do the same damage. But, before we could get out to the hen house…every single bird was dead. Unfortunately, you are correct in assuming it will be back tonight to finish the job. Good luck with protecting the remaining flock with what ever means it takes…

Sure fire solution is set a hav-a-heart with the fresh liver from one of the dead chickens. You will definitely catch the perp. All of those predators will live on the blood meal for 24 hrs then return to either kill more, or eat on the carcasses. If some of the bodies were piled up, as if they were gathered, it is likely a coon. If just heads eaten off likely a weasel, or perhaps mink or fisher. Fishers are not that likely to just eat blood meals as they are big enough that they can eat, or transport, then eat the entire carcass quickly.

Either way I would set a coon sized trap, as that number of dead makes me think there were a couple of animals. Weasels couldn’t eat that much, and weasels and minks usually travel alone, whereas coons often travel in numbers.

The trap is also good, as if you are at all obvious, your perps will not come near.

Shot gun for sure. Hard to hit a small animal moving fast in the dark with a 22. Furthermore I’d rather have them critically wounded, or dead than scared of lightly wounded. I had a limping fox around for years because I thought the 22 was up to the task.

Carl

I am sorry to hear about you loss, it can be discouraging when things like that happen. We lost 125 trout this summer to an otter, some were 6 lbs. in weight, cleaned out the whole pond. A few years ago we had a problem with something taking a chicken a night away and never found the culprit but a hot wire around the pen area stopped the problem. Just a thought but some of these critters are pretty smart and can figure our devices out.

JRT = Jack Russell Terrorist

Sorry Bill. Sounds like feeding is too good for them to be distracted by the liver.

Sounds a lot like weasel, but the numbers seem so high I have doubts, as they tend to be so solitary.

I trapped 6 mink out of my chicken coop one winter, so that seems more likely to me…. several attackers. The fact that the heads are still on makes me doubt coons or fisher.

The minks we had were just stealing eggs though. New pullets weren’t laying for crap… or so we thought, then one bird was killed… by a weasel, as I caught him, but then I noticed the carcass being chewed on, so I set the trap…. mink. Then I saw one leaving the coop one day… no dead chickens… set the trap… another mink, then the egg production shot way up. In all 6 mink, but they never killed a bird.

We did catch a mink after slaughtering a bunch of turkeys one night though.

Bill, any snow? Tracks? Entry site? Mink, and weasels will sometimes find a rotten spot in the floor boards, maybe where mice have already been traveling. Setting a Konabare at such an opening will work too. Mink will go into a hole just because it is a hole, but if you can find their definite entry site they are so habitual that you should get them pretty reliably.

I know how this sucks, especially with frozen pipes etc., there’s hardly enough time to do what needs to be done anyway, then to throw this on top. These predators are wicked crafty, and can be a real hard time to solve.

Good luck, Carl

And I have some poultry electronet you can use also if you want.