Weasel Killed 11 Chickens

Hi there,
I'm new to the forum and so happy to be here.
Our first beautiful flock of 19 were decimated by a weasel last night. We found 11 dead chickens in the coop this morning.
What do you do with the dead chickens? Are they safe for human consumption? Are they safe for animal consumption? Please advice.
Thank you kindly
Julia

Welcome to permies, Julia, and condolences for your loss.

Weasels tend to kill a group of birds/rats and then return to their "larder" to eat more each night for the next week. So first and most important is to move your remaining 8 birds into protective custody.

Personally, step two is to round up as many traps that can catch weasels as you can, put them in an around the kill site with some of the dead birds as bait and kill the offending weasel. Yes, weasels can be a valid part of an ecosystem, as they do kill rats. But from local experience, once a weasel decides that chicken is yummy and easy to target, they will continue to take out every hen house in a 5 mile circle - if not further.

Lastly is deciding if any of the carcasses are worth salvaging. A friend of mine was just mentioning the other day that she discovered her dead birds while they were still warm and skinned them, gutted them and froze them. If they're cold, I wouldn't do that. You know they're fairly fresh, so if you have dogs or cats, I would consider processing meat for them, but I'd be inclined to add spices/garlic to make sure they don't smell or taste like chicken! Even though these birds are fairly fresh, I *never* feed meat to a closely related species. So chicken to fish is fine, chicken back to chicken is not fine. Chicken to bugs like Soldier Flies is also fine, but then still shouldn't be fed to chickens. Nine times out of ten bad things won't happen, but some of the worlds worst diseases were spread by poor feed policies (think Mad Cow which was spread by feeding sheep brains to cows.)

HI Jay,
This is VERY USEFUL. Thank you. I appreciate the detailed response and feel the truth in your share. We are actively sealing up the coop and found a weasel trap. Will set the trap tonight using one of the killed chickens. Did not know they come night after night. Gawd!
Would NEVER feed chicken to chicken. Was going to fed chicken to dog/cat but with feathers removed and yes some way of disguising the meat. We don't want our dog to make the connection as he's a puppy right now 4 months and still playful with the chickens. He's a black/tan hound/austrailian shepherd mix.
I also thought about laying some eggs immediately to replace the loss with baby chicks from our stock. I have no experience with this. If you have advice on how to best get our hens to sit on eggs and hatch, that would be great. I've watched a few videos on youtube already but prefer to interact with people here.
We saw Bernie our remaining rooster mounting one of our white hens. She just laid some eggs. I wonder wether I could collect 7-10 eggs and place them in a nest for her.
Thank you!
Julia

julia ray wrote:She just laid some eggs. I wonder whether I could collect 7-10 eggs and place them in a nest for her.

Julia it would be helpful if you indicated roughly where you are on Planet Earth! If you're in the Southern Hemisphere where spring  is well underway, this would be a great thought, but where I am in BC, we've just had 2 major storms come through and are threatened with snow - that's no time for a mom to be on a nest for three weeks followed by another 6 weeks of relatively tiny chicks on my farm.

That said, Mom-raised chicks, as opposed to incubator hatched and human raised chicks are the best in my opinion. They learn to forage, interact respectfully, speak chicken, watch for predators, and so long as you visit mom regularly, they learn that humans are their teammates. Normally, I watch my chickens for "broody behaviors" and then give them golf-balls to see if they look like they're serious about setting. However, before I even do that, I make sure I've got a place for mom to set - she needs a nest in a quiet spot, food and water and enough room to stretch her legs, but other chickens will often try to sneak in and add eggs to the nest and this tends to wreck the lot of them. The hatch dates will differ, or mom will find different nest to sit on, so the original eggs will get cold etc. Because my usual candidates for broodiness are Muscovy ducks, I use a 4 ft by 4 ft by 4 ft cube with a nest box inside and home-made feeders and waters. Hopefully the hen will come off the nest to poop and I'll either scoop them up or cover them with wood shavings. In a perfect world, the Muscovy "chooses" a cube to lay in, and so all I have to do when she decides she's ready is to add food and water and lock the door. If I was wrong, she quite literally climbs the walls!  If she's just being opinionated and wants to choose a different spot, that's fine so long as she chooses a spot I can protect.

Hi Jay,

We are 3hours north of Toronto so not a great time for this exploration at all. Glad you pointed that out. I definitely would like to explore this in the Spring in April ... if we can protect our flock until then. Today was really devastating considering each one had a name and we've had then since they were little chicks two weeks young.

My partner is currently outside creating Fort Knox!

The upside is that we now seem to have a perfect balance between rooster and hens - one rooster and 8 hens.

You use Muscovy Ducks to sit on chicken eggs?! Would you share why? We love to eat Muscovy ducks but were told they cost more to raise they to purchase so not worth it. I've not had to time challenge that notion. We would love to have expand into ducks, rabbits, goats, and a horse one day! At the moment, we have one 4 month puppy, a bengal kitten we will be breeding, 2 8 week old barn cats we bought from a neighbour we know will be great mousers and our remaining flock of chickens.

Julia

I am loving homesteading.

What a horror show today has been! My partner fortified the coop - at least he thought he did. He went back to check on the chickens this evening at around 9pm (only an hour or so after putting them to bed as he has been fixing the coop all day) and another 3 were killed. This time he actually saw the weasel slip away.

We now have 13 killed. As a result, we actually brought the remaining 6 chickens into our house. Not sure how to fortify the coop to ensure they are safe. What blood thirsty killers they are. We have a trap set up with a killed chicken as bait. Even if he kill this one, I have lost confidence that the coop will ever be a safe place for them.

Julia  

Julia, I'm so sorry to hear that! Can you take photos of the coop as it is currently, from all angles, and post it to this thread? Then more people could look at it and suggest more fortifications.

yes okay i'll do that. i did some research last night and it looks like ontario weasels can slip through quarter sized holes so we need 1/2" wire mesh. we have 1" wire mesh for the coop as well the trap is 1" wire. we set the trap. it's clear the trap got activated but the weasel got out. more proof that 1" wire is just too big. gawd. what a nightmare!

they made a mess inside our hallway but survived the night and are happily wandering the land again today. it's a beautiful sunny day.

Hi Julia,
That is awful to go through. I was just helping my mom clean up after a fox got in and killed 4 of her chickens.

Here are some other thoughts on the coop. Naturally you want the coop to be as fortified as possible, and I agree with the poster asking for pictures so we can help with ideas, but what about the outside? I used a mobile coop surrounded by an electric netting fence. I know I had predators around, but none ever got inside the fence. Mine were of the raccoon, fox, and coyote variety, nothing as small as you are dealing with. Which brings me to my next idea. A guard goose. A single goose can imprint with a flock of other poultry, such as chickens, and will act as a protector. When they get bigger they are great noise makers for the larger predators and will chase away smaller ones on their own. I would think a goose could handle a weasel small enough to fit through a 1" hole. And if there was anything bigger, the mesh should stop them, or perhaps an electric fence. Worst case scenario the goose will make a racket and give you a chance to go protect them.

Get your dog to do his business around that area. Also keep the coop away from the edge of the woods as much as possible. Keep it in the open, because even predators don't feel as comfortable out in the open... and every little bit helps.

Good luck and don't give up. Even the best farmers will sometimes have deaths. This is an unfortunate part of bringing live things onto your property, but use what you have learned, and the new ones you add in the spring will be that much safer.

PS - I missed a couple of your questions.

I would not trust them to be safe for human consumption, but probably fine for animal consumption (with the restrictions that were already mentioned about not feeding the same kind of animal to itself).

I know composting dead animals is done quite often. However you need plenty of carbon to make sure the smell doesn't come out and attract something to your compost pile.

I have also buried chickens and in some rural cases just pitched them way out in the woods (away from the coop of course) to feed whatever wanders by.

We've started using 1/2" Hardware cloth for any permanent chicken structure. Modern "chicken wire" is too weak to stop predators with sharp teeth - they just force an opening by breaking a strand or two. It will keep chickens in, but it won't keep most small predators out.

Weasels also dig and tunnel, so the floor needs to be really well protected also.

Weasels tend to follow rats, so make sure your feed areas are well protected. For our portable chicken structures, I hang the feeder above the perches to make it harder for rats to get to and I teach the chickens to clean up spilled feed. Our feed is "double protected" - a sealed bucket of feed placed inside a metal garbage can sort of idea.

Weasels are *really* hard to trap - keep trying! If you have friends, beg/borrow every different trap you can and hope that one of them will work. The first one we caught on my land was with a pass through rat trap. The one we caught at a friend's place was with a racoon trap, but they can get out of those if they are there long without you getting to them. If you're using a live trap, figure out how you're going to kill the animal in it *before* you trap it. We have a neighbor with a gun and chickens - he's happy to kill a known chicken killer. We've also put the animal, cage and all, in our big freezer - hypothermia is one of the nicer ways to go. Drowning is not recommended, but if it's your only option, I would do so - but if you're going to keep livestock, this sort of thing will happen, so try to plan for that "next time" and hope the plans are never needed.

julia ray wrote:yes okay i'll do that. i did some research last night and it looks like ontario weasels can slip through quarter sized holes so we need 1/2" wire mesh. we have 1" wire mesh for the coop as well the trap is 1" wire. we set the trap. it's clear the trap got activated but the weasel got out. more proof that 1" wire is just too big. gawd. what a nightmare!

1/4" is even better. It should be used to cover all gaps between solid material, and used to prevent digging underneath the coop if it doesn't have a solid floor.

We are going to essentially create a cage in half of the coop which is where we will place the chickens at night. The cage will be made of 1/4"squares! Thanks for the emotional support everyone.

I love the idea of a guard geese and these weasels seem to come in at night when the birds are groggy and disoriented. We did not hear a thing last night when the killing happened and we are nearby. I wonder whether geese are more vocal at night during an attack - is that what you are saying. perhaps they are during the day but would they be in the middle of the night when it's dark and the birds are sleepy and defenceless.

Though electric fence, motion light and all these things add up and makes sense --- we need to put a stop gap on the loses and it seems the only thing that does is 1/4" holes galvanized steel. I suppose I should be happy that this happened so early in the game and yes enabled us to fortify in a way that will prevent future loss.

The remaining chickens, Bernie the bird our rooster as well as 5 hens are in a cage in our hallway cooing and sleeping until we can be sure they will be safe in the coop.

Thanks again for all your support. The feedback was truly helpful practically and emotionally. I prefer to interact with real people then just listen to random people on youtube.

Julia

I'm sorry you have found the worst thing about raising animals. What bothers me so much is the amount of waste and time that goes down the drain so quickly. I have found virtually nothing is predator-proof.

Predators generally have excellent senses of smell, so any traps with human scent on them may have a reduced chance to work. They typically trace the perimeter of a coop looking for a weak point. I try to place traps alongside the edge so that without bait even they will naturally walk through them trying to find a hole in the fence. You may even place something at an angle to the trap to create a funnel to guide them into the entrance of the trap rather than go around it.

Alternatively, I had the idea of creating a hole in a coop intentionally leading to a built-in trap that could be in place all the time, always ready, though I have not tried it yet.

Hi Jordan,

Thank you for reflecting that. Yes it hurts to open the door innocently and see a mass slaughter! My eyes initially could not register what I was seeing as I only saw our rooster silky dead at the door. Then I saw big bird our other massive rooster also dead and thought OMG the roosters got into a fight. Then I looked and saw all the dead bodied everywhere. Heart breaking. We got our first back of 10 when they were 2 weeks from a friend ... 8 easter eggers and 2 silkies who were born on mother's day. My grandmother had chickens when I was little girl but i have had no direct experience myself.

To balance out the rooster/hen situation, we sourced 12 Rhodes Island Reds from a local Mennonite community and just got those so we did not have time to bond with them at all. All the others had names. The Rhodies seem too similar to differentiate with names.

I like the idea of setting up traps now as it's going to take us a week to buy the fence we need and install it... in the meantime we could hunt down that darn weasel! All great ideas about the traps including an intentional one in the coop.

Thank you

Hi Julia,

that's a sad story and as others mentioned, once the weasel got the taste it will return again and again.

They are predators and their body is made to follow Mice and Rats in their holes.
Usually from 22 millimeters or 7/8" they pass easy, so the coop needs to be almost hermetically sealed.

As Child we use to trap them in Boxes and 5 out of 10 will die of stress (heart attack) if trapped.

Predator urine helps (but how to get it?) and some strong scented plants might do so too if the weasel is not too hungry.

In countries like Germany they are even protected so I would recommend you contact the local wildlife agency or licensed hunters who can give you an advise or helping to get rid of them.

Eek, my sympathies to you!  We had a mongoose go in and kill all the chicks in our coop a long time ago, pulled the guts out of them and left them there to die.  It was shocking and devastating.

After I caught it, I cut it open to confirm, and yes, one of the chicks was in its stomach.  (No use targeting an animal if it's the wrong species.)

We had to reinforce the coop (I believe it was chicken wire at the time) and put hardware cloth over it, with smaller holes.

Recently, I spotted a mongoose slinking by in my carport, so I quickly set up a trap behind some plants, set with meat (I had some chicken skin scraps from a friend, destined for the compost pile.)  Caught it by day's end.

I used a live trap, Havahart 1079.  Not sure why I can't link directly to it, but here's a link to live traps:  https://amzn.to/3QfhfvZ

It's the larger trap I use, good for stray cats, chickens/roosters, mongoose.  The smaller version (single door) I use for rats and mice (and inadvertently, toads, which I let go).

When I see mongoose nowadays, or my neighbors let me know they've seen one, I set that trap up immediately.  Not only might they kill the chickens, but they will eat the eggs, too.  (My birds roam free on our city yard, so I try to target the predators, rather than keep the birds confined...besides, the coop is rotting apart, and I don't have the carpentry skills to build another.)

Dead animals go into the regular compost pile or the worm bin, and any black soldier fly larvae that are likely to show up a couple weeks later get fed to the chickens...free food, with minimal work on my part.

hi there

that's really useful to hear about trapping them -- that they die of a heart attack in there. i feel bad as my chickens are not in the coop. it's winter here and they long to wander but i cannot let them out anymore for fear of losing them all. my partner built a chicken traktor but hasn't had time to add wheels so i do carry them all in - one by one and then back one by one ... it's a lot of work but i do that once in a while to give them a change of scenery and to air out the coop.

once we get some wheels on there and find some design where they could walk in and out, it'll be easier to move them around in the spring summer fall ..that's the hope anyways. i did buy the booklet from the person who's forum this is and really appreciated learning.

i look forward to growing a garden with food for them as well and getting all these moving parts working together!

so much work.

in the meantime much appreciation to all of us for the love we give to our animals and land.

Julia

There is a woman with a youtube channel called Fy Nyth - she has a tiny house and homestead in mountainous Wyoming. She had a raccoon kill 8 of her ducks in one fell swoop and has some good videos about the way she now handles her flocks as far as shelter, feeding, etc. Here is her video on predator hardening her duck coop:

She has Icelandic chickens as well as Swedish Blue ducks (although I think she is moving to Khaki Campbells because the SB's weren't laying much and they didn't enjoy the "freezer camp" ducks from that breed either). Her chickens are pretty broody and have sat on both chicken and duck clutches (one of her hens would follow her "defective chicks" as far as the edge of the creek and then watch them paddling around, clucking for them to come back whenever they went too deep hahah) and also just hatched a clutch of chicks in April when they had 3 feet of snow on the ground. She gives the broody hen a pet carrier/crate to shelter in with food and water. Her Icelandic chickens seem to do very well in that climate and have continued to enlarge her flock.

None of this helps the immediate problem, which had to be devastating! But I had no idea that hens and ducks would hatch other birds until I saw her animals, so I thought seeing another bird keeper in a harsh winter climate might offer some ideas for how to go forward.

Mercy Pergande wrote: Her chickens are pretty broody and have sat on both chicken and duck clutches (one of her hens would follow her "defective chicks" as far as the edge of the creek and then watch them paddling around, clucking for them to come back whenever they went too deep hahah) and also just hatched a clutch of chicks in April when they had 3 feet of snow on the ground.

OK, I use Muscovy moms to hatch out goslings, Khaki-Campbells, or Muscovy offspring, but I've suggested letting them try to hatch out chicks and that seems too big a stretch for my co-farmers! Maybe this will convince others to give it a go.

I've got a couple of Khakis that were raised by Muscovy that have acted like they were thinking of brooding themselves, but I find they're just too flighty so I haven't trusted them to do so. In the wild, Mallard drakes hang around the nest and give support. I think isolating a Khaki duck on her own could be emotionally hard on her. That said, so long as my Muscovy don't go on strike, they get the job done, and are usually willing to mother them for at least 4 weeks.

Jay Angler wrote: I think isolating a Khaki duck on her own could be emotionally hard on her. That said, so long as my Muscovy don't go on strike, they get the job done, and are usually willing to mother them for at least 4 weeks.

The woman I referenced didn't really isolate her broody hens per se, she provided them with the pet carrier space in with the other chickens, and one hen that was low on the pecking order got a little more space on her own for her protection (I think she would let her have free run of the coop and put the other chickens on free range whenever she wanted out for a break), but they weren't away from the flock as much as just in a sheltered space with all the hustle and bustle around them. She's got a couple of really good mother hens in her flock it seems. I think she has a couple of videos just on the cross-species broody hens.

She just got the Khaki Campbells so I'm curious to see how they differ from the Swedish Blues. Her birds are really beautiful, and it's fun to see them behaving so naturally.

Mercy Pergande wrote:The woman I referenced didn't really isolate her broody hens per se, she provided them with the pet carrier space in with the other chickens, and one hen that was low on the pecking order got a little more space on her own for her protection...

Yes this is the balance. My experience is that if I don't separate the broody bird, other birds will add eggs to the nest, and then the broody doesn't always find her way back to the original nest and the eggs get too cold, or they just see that everyone else is having fun and get distracted from their job. In the wild, chickens and ducks wouldn't generally lay in "groups", but more likely would seek an isolated nest spot and hide it as best possible from any other birds.

However, often in the wild, an young bird may not be successful the first time they go broody, and many probably don't even make it through if they haven't chosen a safe enough nesting place. In fact the spring of 2022 the weather was horrible and my friend who is a wildlife photographer focused mostly on birds was monitoring several Hummingbird nests and was dismayed how many of the nests were lost due to bad storms literally blowing the nests out of the shrubs/trees they were in. It's easy to forget how privileged our domestic birds often are!