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

ashcons said:

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),

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The only marketer involved was me, when I convinced my husband to build it.
Of course, we designed it to accommodate 4 birds as per our Town's specs for keeping backyard chickens in a suburban setting. We've had birds in that coop for years and never had an injury, death, illness or predator breach. What happened this weekend was a freak event.

ashcons said:

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.

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That was my conclusion (involving a bear giving them a scare, heh), as I explained in my earlier post.

ashcons said:

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.

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Interesting hypothesis but there were no feathers outside the coop, none stuck in the 1/4" hardware cloth either. The feathers were found on the interior run side of the corpse.

ashcons said:

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.

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Correct.

ashcons said:

I know you had someone else give anecdotal evidence that they don't think the birds could have died from fright,

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They did? I don't think so. I didn't see anyone say that.

KarynVA said:

They did? I don't think so. I didn't see anyone say that.

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There was someone saying their mom didn't think it could happen because she witnessed a hen sitting watching a bear eat a rooster without fussing.

It does sound like a bit of a freak event, but also not surprising given the size of the run and capability of chickens to freak out when they think they're going to die. I've seen my birds freak out over the dumbest crap - not predators, but stuff like a new, inanimate object in the yard causing everyone to believe death is imminent and lose what little they have of minds. Some of the other pictures show the coop being a little larder than the first picture made it look (more context from other stuff), but the run is still small and low, creating a confined space for this scenario to play out.

KarynVA said:

The feathers missing seems to be the biggest clue to what happened, but also the biggest disprover of nearly every theory!

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I think your own birds killing each other is less likely than them being harassed to death, especially given the time. My bet is the missing feathers were from the other birds exploring the crime scene and more of a red herring than a clue.

Ohhh that's right I forgot about that. The one where the chickens lived in "bear country" (so yeah, they probably regarded bears the way mine regard squirrels! lol).

I agree with you on the rest of what you say, above. Thanks for the input @ashcons !