Some background: our family's had chickens since I was a little kid. We've had thousands, literally. I've seen pretty much every type of chicken death there is. This is new for us....but maybe not so much to one of you reading this. (TexAgs knows Stuff) These (former) birds were my father's and we were feeling obliged to keep them alive, but that choice was taken away by something.

Here are the facts that make it odd:

* They were fed and watered on a Sunday after Dad's funeral by several people (funeral was on Saturday). Wednesday, this is all that was left when I went to check on them.
* There were 15-20 chickens, none of us can remember the exact number. They are all dead. There are lots of small bones - no large carcasses. It does not appear that many, if ANY, of the full carcasses were taken from the pen to be eaten.
* The pen was securely latched from the outside and high up on the door.
* There are no openings into the pen larger than 4.5" x 3". That opening has cobwebs on it. The tin along the bottom is all secure, the wire on the sides is all still secured, and the tin roof is still all attached.
* There was NO smell of death, or of rotting meat.
* There are only 5 pairs of legs left, and 2 wings. We found one keel bone, and one breast bone. All the other pieces are small and shattered.
* Some of the legs are still attached to the small bone that runs between them - this is strange, as anyone who's ever ripped a chicken leg off a carcass knows that usually one leg will rip off and the joints aren't terribly strong. On a raw chicken, it's very easy to just pop the joint and have the leg be held together by the skin.
* There is no blood. No blood spatters. There are no piles of feathers matted by blood. There is no dirt where the blood soaked in.
* There were no ants going after the legs and bones that were left (although there weren't that many).
* There are NO bits of tendons left on any piece of bone.
* There are no heads left anywhere.
* There are no bits of bones, feathers, etc. anywhere around the pens within 100+ ft.
* None of the bones have any teeth or gnaw marks on them.
* The pic of the pen that shows the feathers was taken in the middle of the coop. There is as much room behind the camera as you see in the pic - plenty of room for the chickens to run.

I remember that smear of blood being there for a while before this oddity happened


[This message has been edited by jacb04 (edited 3/6/2008 3:15p).]

Here are a few of the pics we took:












"Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."


John '04

that's odd...

very strange...

Pollocabra???

Chupapollo???

[This message has been edited by CE Lounge Lizzard (edited 3/6/2008 4:35p).]

You might want to pretend this never happened...

I'd try to contact someone in our poultry science department. Maybe an email with that description with pictures attached. It's hard to believe all the meat on those chickens is picked clean like that in just three days. Something was VERY hungry!

Some animals will methodically strip the feathers off their kill before they eat, and that gives the blood time to congeal so there is fairly little bleeding. Cats do that alot. Also, don't put it past some critter squeezing in there through the tiniest opening they can force into...

Could have been all sorts of animals...

It wasn't us!

Although the grounds where we hold our annual family reunion has an eerily similar "after" condition - I assure you that these are held in July, not March.

VERY WEIRD.............

I don't suppose there are any Army Ants in your area???

My first guess would be racoons. You'd also be surprised by what a hawk or owl could do inside a cage.

Why would coons eat the beaks (and other bones)? Aren't they fairly finicky (for wild animals at least)?

The pics that you have of bones is typical of what you would see with a bird of prey kill. Head is gone, feet are left, bones are picked clean, and tendons are left from pulling away the meat from the bone.

But I don't know on the missing carcasses.

Mouth, we've had all these animals kill birds before:

Raccoons, 'Possums, bobcat, feral cat, skunk, hawks, owls, coyotes, dogs, snakes, and other various animals.

I'm not saying that it's not possible that it was one of them, just that it is all really unique to me.

Maverick, I'm leaning more and more towards fwding to the Poultry Science Dept, but I have faith in Texags first

TexAgs, we know stuff!!!

Yeah, if it was a coon, you would likely find a couple that had been partially eaten and a bunch of dead carcasses. They will completely decimate a pen full of birds in one night, but they usually only eat a small amount. Now some are smart enough to keep coming back night after night and only taking a couple of birds each night.

I had one doing this in my bird pens last spring. I finally set my alarm to go off every hour and I went out there with a spotlight. I finally found him in there at 5:00am (of course). He didn't make it.

Those tendons and meat left on the bone appear to be weeks old. Meat doesn't turn that hard and none rotten fast either, feathers don't degrade, so they'll stay around. But... ehh would doubt this is a recent attack.

Aslo, keep in mind that it could have been a combination of animals. The commotion of a slaughter like this would most likely bring in other predators. I once had a coon killing birds in a pen that brought in a bobcat.

They both didn't make it

Since there was no one watching the birds, do you think that someone helped themselves to them and created a "crime scene" to make you think it was an animal?

not saying this is what it is, but...

a town near us had odd animal deaths, disappearances. turns out it was some sort of witchcraft group.

i wish i was making that up.

I personally doubt it, we've had birds "liberated" by "exchange students" before and normally there isn't anything left and the door is left open.

In regards to the tendons in the pics, we didn't take the photos until about a week after it all happened, sorry for the confusion.

Is any of that metal loose enough for animals to push through? Had to be more than 1 I would think.

GUYS, all BS aside... This is the work of none other than a rabid pack of miniature dachshunds! I've seen em' work, they can tear up a fried chicken leg in seconds!

Beware the rabid weiner dogs!

MA: all the metal along the bottom is tight, as is the tin roof

My folks have had chickens and guinea's all my life and i have never seen anything like the photos before... Now we have had coyotes pulling chicks through the wire mesh cages and eating them, but nothing like the photos above.

Many years ago I ran across a similar scene in a chicken house that sheltered 30 or so frying size chickens ... about half grown. Some remnants of carcasses remained scattered on the floor about like you saw ... but the majority were Missing ... like disappeared.

My dad announced rats as the culprits right away. We went immediately to the vicinity of the barns where we had large feed stacks. He led the search, moving and looking under things that might shelter a rat den. Under a stack of corrugated sheet iron he found their den. Some were in shallow tunnels right under the tin but we saw several holes going deeper. There were chicken feathers in the area. Rats were running in every direction and the dogs were having a field day and us teenage boys were clubbing them right and left. We dug up the ground in the area and found two large chambers filled with chicken carcasses ... about 20 or so.

We knew that rats were living in the barn and feed area but had no idea at the number. We had occasionally had baby chicks disappear from the brooders but never such a wholesale slaughter .... and chicken-napping. From then on we declared war on rats at the barns ... forever.

Strange but true.

and there you have it. TexAgs, we know stuff.

And in the words of Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber: "Thanks. Hey, I guess they're right. Senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose. I'll be right back. Don't you go dying on me!"

(just kidding fossil...well, except about the last part!)

I have seen hawks and large owls do this before. In central Texas The Greater Horned Owl is a good chicken killer. These owls are abundant in Texas and pretty much all over North America. A big one can rip open a rabbit cage or chicken wire fence rather easily.

A weasel can also mess up chickens pretty bad too.

My bet would be a bunch of rats, or a whole pack of coons. I've seen what they can do to a big stringer of fish left dangling in a lake overnight....

I raised racing pigeons when I was younger. A ringtail cat killed 30 out of 35 in one night before I found them the next morning.

racing pigeons????

That is a new one on me.

You should start a new thread on that sometime. I would like to hear more about this.

If that was my shed and my chickens, I would go out tomorrow, but me about 5-7 chickens, put them back in that cage without cleaning anything out there is in there right now and put up a game camera. Should be realy interesting to see what happens!!!!

2 things that I will be thinking about: looking for rats and buying some new chickens and a game camera.

We'll see how far beyond "thinking" I get

Though I will be honest and say that it seems pretty far-fetched to think that rats could do this (no offense fossil!)

Rats will surprise you - very tenacious. I remember a news story from the Valley of a little girl being killed by rats.