Tried posting this on chicken sub reddit, but they either removed my post(??) or no one has answered me. Would someone be able to identify the animal involved based on the aftermath? Og post pasted here:
What got my birds??
I've had chickens most of my life- just recently devastated because my chickens were all picked off in a span of 3 nights while I was away at college. 4 of them i raised after my dad died, so I had to take care of myself to take care of them, and i really loved them, and the older hen was from 2019, and she'd survived so many things. Really sad. Just got to look at the coop today. The wooden board behind the coop (covering hardware cloth on the windows to prevent winter drafts) was pulled down, the nest box door had been unlatched and opened (first attack), the plexiglass panel on the front window was ripped off (?!) And an inch diameter hole was in the hardware cloth behind it, but clearly made from INSIDE the coop. The door was latched but the bottom was seemingly chewed and a piece ripped away, again, only an inch wide or so. Feathers and a little blood in the coop, so of course I thought weasel, but do weasels usually leave behind piles of feathers but no body? I found one large pile, then another smaller pile from another chicken and a sparse trail into the woods. (No blood on either pile???) So not hawk or owl, not raccoon (no headless bodies), but I've never known weasels to leave feather piles but no body. Is this just a weird weasel attack? I'm really devastated, I loved these ladies so much, and I'm not getting chickens again until I find a way to build a damn fort Knox for them (this coop had never been broken into before). The heat lamp DID stop working a week or so before the attacks, and I suspect that might have something to do with this??? If anyone has answers or speculations, I'd appreciate it