Anyway to tell if it was a Fox or coyote??

[Nksg75]

A little background first on my situation:
I live in a HOA restricted neighborhood, and had all my chickens at our farm about 1 hour drive from home. The drive was becoming too much to be able to adequately care for the chickens. So I found a nice family willing to let me relocate my chickens to their land in exchange for caring for their pets while they travel. I recently relocated all my 29 chickens to their property(about 1 1/2 months ago).
They also have chickens, 2 Livestock guardian dogs, and 2 intact male donkeys. The donkeys are in the same pasture as the chicken coop that house my chickens.
The dogs used to roam the whole property(including where my chickens are), however while the family has been gone since June 12th they have been restricted to just near the house and their coop area. There is good reason, as part of the fence in the donkey pasture has gaps that one dog has been getting through and visiting neighbors. I was worried something would happen to her while they were out of town, so the owner and I prevented the dogs from entering the donkey pasture.
2 days ago, as usual I went out to check on the chickens and discovered that while they were freeranging something killed 7 of my hens and the rooster. This took place sometime between the hours of 11:30am- 5 pm.
No body's left, just piles of feathers located along a very long stretch of a tree line.
Now I have already put a stop to freeranging for now, and trying to figure out if it was work of a coyote or a fox. Is their anyway to tell the difference?
I thought with having the donkeys they would somewhat prevent visiting coyotes, however would donkeys see a fox as they would a coyote?
The odd thing is not one of the families chickens were touched. Was this because of the dogs? Or could it be that their chickens are located on groomed land, and the pasture my chickens are in is a bit overgrown.
Their chickens have always freeranged the entire area.
I am going to post pics of the layout of my setup to give a better idea of what I'm talking about.

What I am curious about is how do people who freerange chickens not lose their entire flock?
I know some do, and my heart goes out to those people.
I don't like to lose any chickens, but I also want them to be able to be chickens.(being able to peck, scratch, catch bugs, and just be chickens)
I have a secure coop, hardware cloth covering every inch of open area, including skirting around the coop. I do not have a run, just a repurposed shed that they already had in that pasture.

Layout of land:

View attachment 1488086

Here is a pic of the shed/coop
View attachment 1488089

 

[Top Rooster]

Well I used to have my chickens free range but I had too many problems letting them free range I had a fox attack twice then the hawks started to attack and so I just gave up and now they don’t free range that often but they’re run is very large. So the way the fox killed our chickens was he’d kill one and bring it to the woods then he’d come back and get another and do the same until he had killed about 6 of them, it was like he was stocking up on chicken. But for a coyote i don’t know how they kill.

 

[True Patriot]

sorry
Your pics aren't showing. But during the day my first guess would be fox. Since the bodies were carried away. Could be coyotes but I would think that would be closer to evening.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Some of those answers are not easy to come by. Usually when that many birds are killed it is a dog or weasel but if all are missing, it may have been a pack of coyotes.
7 birds taken from the property at one time is very unusual.
I see coyotes all times of day and night. A pair walked through my front yeard at 9 AM, some moved through the back about 11 AM and had an attack about 5 PM that took two chicks and a rooster. However the rooster had sent all the hens for cover and that was all I lost.
I think it partly matters what one's tolerance for pain is and their individual circumstances. If I had 4 hens, I would have zero tolerance. However I breed a unique breed and while it is painful to lose some, I usually have between 40 and 100 chickens and hatch most of the year. Sometimes I have as many as 8 flocks of chickens. A couple in open pens but most free range all day every day. I contend with raccoons, opossums, mink, weasels, fox, coyotes and a variety of hawks and owls. Bobcats, bears and mountain lions aren't far away but I haven't had an attack yet.
I truly believe that having one or more good agile roosters with each flock is what saves most of my hens and chicks.

 

[Northern.Ontario]

True free ranging is a death sentence waiting to happen for your flock. All it takes is a single fox passing through the area to stumble upon the chickens and then it's all over for them. The fox will massacre them all until something spooks it. Electric poultry netting 48" high is the way to go. Connected to a large energizer. the 8,000 volt shock will send any land based predator scrambling. The square opening at the bottom are small enough to deter the small predators like weasels and rats. My fence has even fried a few frogs that tried to cross it.

 

[Bryant Redhawk]

I would think fox. Day time predation, donkey didn't raise a ruckus, which they will do when a coyote is anywhere near by. If it is a vixen there may be cubs to feed and that would lead to multiple takes.
We have coyotes in our area and they don't come anywhere near our place. Our donkey is always on the alert when the coyote pack sounds off before they go on the hunt. A donkey will kill a coyote, and they are efficient at doing so. I've seen video of one donkey killing three coyotes that foolishly tried to attack the donkey.

 

[Criticalicious]

My fence has even fried a few frogs that tried to cross it.

Would you believe my fence fried a large insect?

 

[cmom]

Your pictures didn't come through for me either. If you have a game camera put it up. Most likely whatever it was will be back. In the past that is how I found out was with my game cameras.

 

[PirateGirl]

There's no real way to know which fox vs. coyote. Clues would be size of tracks and/or scat left on the property. Also if either have been sighted in the area, they are likely the culprit as they don't generally share territory. I used to live in a neighborhood with foxes, there were not coyotes around. I now live in a neighborhood with a pack of coyotes, there are not foxes around. A predator won't necessarily kill the entire flock in one hit, but now that it knows there's a food source it will likely return. A bobcat can/will also kill many in one night. All can clear fences easily. It's possible one of the LGDs or the donkeys interrupted the action which is why not all chickens were lost. They are all very smart and this is not the first I've heard of a predator taking advantage of a change in the routine of the humans to snatch some chickens.

 

[cmom]

I had a bobcat kill several of my Pheasants. I caught him in leg traps. Here he is with some of the birds he killed. I put the leg traps out the first morning I found several dead birds in their pen. He didn't come back the next night but did the following night. I put the traps around the place he had dug a couple of nights before. Most predators will come back. There have been other chicken owners in my area that have lost birds to bobcats. I bought some game cameras and put them up in different places on my property. After this I put electric wire around all of my coops and pens. No more problem with predators digging under the fences. I put concrete under the gates because a fox dug under a gate and killed several birds. I put netting over all of my pens because I had an owl kill some birds.