I lost plenty of chickens to foxes and coyotes (during the day!) when I free-ranged, so I'm not sure having them loose at night is a great idea, either. There probably wouldn't be any massacres, but I'd probably lose a lot more of them in the long run.
I’m still in shock but the night before last a bear ripped the hardware cloth off the back of my coop and killed all but one of my chickens. The only survivor is in a rabbit cage in my bathroom and I’ll be putting her temporarily into a hutch in the garage until I can figure out what to do with...