I have a 4x6 pen (2x4, and welded wire construction with plywood on one end with a door cut into it) and the 'house' is a large plastic doghouse screwed down onto a wooden pallet and held onto the pen with a 1" nylon ratchet strap. on it's own, the house weighs probably close to 100 lbs with the bedding and pallet, not to mention the birds living inside.
this has been a grow out pen for me for 2 years now with never any problems until this week.
Wednesday morning I went down to find that the strap had been chewed apart, the pallet and bottom half of the doghouse about 3-4 feet from where it normally sits and the top off (lock tabs were broken). I had 4 silver laced bantam cochins and 5 red bantam cochins growing in there (they free range part of every day and went to bed on their own). both of my roos, 1 red 1 silver laced were gone but the girls all accounted for. I found the roos later. well what remained of them. the silver laced's tail and a red wing.
that evening, we also discovered one of the other pens (similar design but has an attached house instead of doghouse) had scratch marks on the top (lifts for access) and one of the hinges was broken. Those birds were all fine though and the lid has been screwed down semi-permanently until I can relocate them and repair it.
today, while working on my new pens, I noticed part of the wire had been pulled and twisted a bit oddly in spots... then looked a bit closer and it LOOKS like something tried to bite it's way thru the wire... it looks like something hooked upper canines in the wire and pulled back.
we'd been thinking coyote, but the spacing between the pull marks is nearly 4" and they're about 2' off the ground...
any thoughts what this could be?
(spare the lectures about chicken wire being unsecure... I know and when i'm done those will be internal walls between pens only)
some pics are clearer than others... if you view the larger size maybe you can see it better... the one with the pencil on the wire was just to show size, but it's 1" hex wire.
this has been a grow out pen for me for 2 years now with never any problems until this week.
Wednesday morning I went down to find that the strap had been chewed apart, the pallet and bottom half of the doghouse about 3-4 feet from where it normally sits and the top off (lock tabs were broken). I had 4 silver laced bantam cochins and 5 red bantam cochins growing in there (they free range part of every day and went to bed on their own). both of my roos, 1 red 1 silver laced were gone but the girls all accounted for. I found the roos later. well what remained of them. the silver laced's tail and a red wing.
that evening, we also discovered one of the other pens (similar design but has an attached house instead of doghouse) had scratch marks on the top (lifts for access) and one of the hinges was broken. Those birds were all fine though and the lid has been screwed down semi-permanently until I can relocate them and repair it.
today, while working on my new pens, I noticed part of the wire had been pulled and twisted a bit oddly in spots... then looked a bit closer and it LOOKS like something tried to bite it's way thru the wire... it looks like something hooked upper canines in the wire and pulled back.
we'd been thinking coyote, but the spacing between the pull marks is nearly 4" and they're about 2' off the ground...
any thoughts what this could be?
(spare the lectures about chicken wire being unsecure... I know and when i'm done those will be internal walls between pens only)
some pics are clearer than others... if you view the larger size maybe you can see it better... the one with the pencil on the wire was just to show size, but it's 1" hex wire.
