While we were away, we lost 18 adult birds. This is half of our adult chicken population. We believe this was due to a bobcat. Here is a video from last evening around 8 PM.
There was another video from around 1 AM.
Tom went looking for it but couldn’t find it in our back woods and overgrown field. We lost our beautiful tom turkey, one of Eliz’s roosters and our Mr. Orange.
Per the farm sitter she found the turkey, one rooster and 3 brown and black hens. She said they were mostly found in the barn, but one black hen was caught in the gate, and the turkey was in the front field. She said that the window screen had been broken and things improved when she shut this window into the barn. But I am not so sure as so many of the birds just went missing. We didn’t lose any geese or peafowl, however. None of the younger chickens were killed either, although most of them are still in two enclosed barn pens.
So we have shored up the barn. The netting we keep putting over the large doors into the barn keeps getting destroyed so we secured a large hog panel over it today. We have all of the windows to the hay loft closed and will close all of the doors with the animals inside at night. We will not be enclosing the cows, donkeys or pigs, hoping that they will not be targets.
I hope this plan works.
Oh Donna! I’m so sorry about your loss! It must have broken your heart and Tom’s, too. That turkey was so beautiful, and I was looking forward to his offspring, and I’m sure you were, too. I hope Tom can find that bobcat.
Did your farm sitter stay at the farm the whole time you were gone? Or did she just come morning and evening?
It is breaking our hearts. Tom hasn’t found the bobcat yet, but he’s still looking. She only came to do the chores and then left.
What a horrible loss and that guy will be back every evening and when desperate during the day to get more of your flock!!! You may want to contact your local animal control and have them trap and relocate the varmint!!
Rita
Thanks Rita. We will look into that.
ugh. what a hard thing to come home to 🙁 I’m so sorry
It is hard.
Ouch; what a let-down after your wonderful trip. We have bobcats in this area and they’ve never bothered my sheep (the boys don’t get locked up at night), so I can’t imagine your donkeys, cows, or pigs could be at risk from a bobcat. After daily (interrupted) visits to our hens by a raccoon this spring, Rick turning our run into Ft. Knox seems to have done the trick here.
It was a let-down. Makes me not want to go on vacations anymore. In research apparently they only rarely go after sheep. But I am worried that after we cut off access to the chickens it might. I hope we have Fort Knox now. We have gotten away with less than that for many years. No more.
So sorry to hear, Donna. Hope your Ft Knox does the trick. I know that hurts!!!
Thanks Aunt Ruthie! I hope it does too.
Hugs you guys. That is very tough.
Thanks! It is tough.