Trying to narrow down what's killing my
chickens.
Two
chickens killed, one week apart, broad daylight. Both found with stripped neck feathers (broken necks) and breast feathers pulled with some breast meat eaten. One was within a
fence, one just outside a
fence in my driveway. One partially disemboweled.
My understanding is that most daytime predators (fox/coyote) would carry off the kill to eat/stash in a safer place. In both cases, the predator only ate some breast meat at or near the kill. And did it while someone was home, moving in and out of the house.
Property is wooded on one side, busy highway on the other. So something is maybe coming out of the woods but not taking the carcass back in. Opossum or raccoon would not theoretically do this in daylight, even though I suspect a smaller predator that couldn't easily move the carcass. NW Missouri. Never heard of weasels around here. Raptors are a possibility (just hard to believe an adult
chicken would be a target and both kills were under/around some amount of tree cover.