Mystery: did a predator do this? Warning, gruesome photos

I found two of my 4 chickens dead this morning and no blood, no sign of breach of the coop or run, no sign of digging, no bent hardware cloth or hole in hardware cloth. No scratches, scrapes, or evidence of shaking of the coop. Their waterer was still standing upright on a brick inside the run, near their bodies. It happened before I closed their coop at 10:00 last night (I usually close it earlier but was on a Zoom call that went longer than expected, so it was pitch dark when I finally got out there. The two unharmed chickens were inside the closed coop this morning; the dead ones were in the run.) There is a lot of bear scat in my yard but I do not know how long it has been there; I've not actually witnessed the bear in person but I know there are bears around here. There is also a fox, and racoons and skunks. You get the idea. See this other thread for much more detail and photos of my coop and run as they were after the incident.

Now for the gruesome photos:




Only one had feathers missing. Here is another angle of that one. Using gloves, obviously, I checked the bodies for bites or punctures and could find none.

Yes. Predator of some sort. Raccoons will often kill in site and then return later.

Somehow I doubt bear. That would have knocked over stuff and likely scarfed some chicken feed or at least nosed it. They tend to make a mess when they nose through.

And a fox could have also done it.

Obviously it was done in the dark before your locked up. If it was after dark, my bet is on raccoon. The little devils can really manipulate gaps in coops and runs.

LofMc

There is no chicken feed in the run it's always kept up in the enclosed coop.

If a raccoon did it, why are there no visible wounds? Out of curiosity, did you look at my other thread where I posted photos of the coop and run as they appeared after the incident? There were no gaps in the hardware cloth, no place where it had been breached or damaged. No signs of digging around the edges.

I'm curious if the feathers have skin attached at the base.Theres no blood or injuries.

No, I didn't, and I will, but it doesn't matter. You admit to closing at 10pm after dark and didn't do a head count then.

The attack happened with an open coop, so you know how it got in.

I'm still inclined towards raccoon first, then fox. Bear would have made a bigger mess.

LofMc

Lady of McCamley said:

No, I didn't, and I will, but it doesn't matter. You admit to closing at 10pm after dark and didn't do a head count then.

The attack happened with an open coop, so you know how it got in.

I'm still inclined towards raccoon first, then fox. Bear would have made a bigger mess.

LofMc

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If you bothered to look at my photos in the other thread you'd see there wasn't an "open coop". The chickens in the coop were unharmed; it was the chickens in the run that died. As I said over and over, there was no breach, no digging, no damage on the run or coop side. No sign of forced entry, as they say.

After thinking about it since yesterday and evaluating the evidence, I think what happened is a bear came near the run and the pullets went inside the coop and the two males stayed in the run to protect the females. I think the 2 males in the run, which are very skittish in the best of circumstances, flew in a panic at the sight of the bear and broke their necks by hitting the coop floor above them on one side of the run.

KarynVA said:

After thinking about it since yesterday and evaluating the evidence, I think what happened is a bear came near the run and the pullets went inside the coop and the two males stayed in the run to protect the females. I think the 2 males in the run, which are very skittish in the best of circumstances, flew in a panic at the sight of the bear and broke their necks by hitting the coop floor above them on one side of the run.

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How do you explain the feather loss?

KarynVA said:

If you bothered to look at my photos in the other thread you'd see there wasn't an "open coop". The chickens in the coop were unharmed; it was the chickens in the run that died. As I said over and over, there was no breach, no digging, no damage on the run or coop side. No sign of forced entry, as they say.

After thinking about it since yesterday and evaluating the evidence, I think what happened is a bear came near the run and the pullets went inside the coop and the two males stayed in the run to protect the females. I think the 2 males in the run, which are very skittish in the best of circumstances, flew in a panic at the sight of the bear and broke their necks by hitting the coop floor above them on one side of the run.

Click to expand...

Am I understanding correctly that you have 4 total chickens, 2 females-unharmed in the coop, and 2 MALES dead in the run? Is it possible the males were fighting?

BrooksHatlen said:

How do you explain the feather loss?

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Based on input I received on the other thread, and the evidence, my assumption is that the surviving chickens pecked the feathers out of the corpse after the incident in an attempt to wake the alpha chicken.

The idea that the two males fought each other to death is one of our earlier guesses; but in talking to experts that we know, they said cockerels that young would never fight each other that hard. I'd never seen them fight before; I've seen them chest-bump and try to show dominance, but not fight.

Based on (lots of conjecture and experience with predators) the size of your coop in the picture (marketers oversell how many birds you can fit in there), I'm betting a predator (raccoon, fox) was trying to get to them and they died from fright in the run, possibly breaking their necks in the excitement of trying to get away from death on the other side of the hardware cloth. If the body with picked feathers was next to the run walls, a raccoon trying to grab whatever it could to pull the bird through and only getting feathers from the body resting against the hardware cloth would be an explanation for no obvious wounds.

If the bird was laying on its side and the feathers were plucked away from the run wall, your two pullets may have done that before you got to the bird. I know you had someone else give anecdotal evidence that they don't think the birds could have died from fright, but that small run and birds being harassed from the outside by a raccoon is definitely plausible. I have seen birds go nuts in a much bigger run trying to get away from a raccoon outside of the run - flying all over the place and into the run walls/ceiling @ ~8'.

Raccoons are crepuscular, so if you've got light up until around 9pm right now, that would be prime raccoon party time. If you went out at 10, that would have given a coon or coons a hour+ to harass your birds to death and work on getting to them. I literally dealt with 4 raccoons last night myself between 930pm and 12am.