This morning when I went down to the big aviary I found a young rooster dead in the pen without a mark on him so I thought the rain had killed him when I turned around there were egg shells everywhere. I went to the nest box where there was a ring teal sitting on ten eggs to find four eggs and a destroyed nest, a few feet away the greenwing teal nest was destroyed but no eggs were eaten. I turned around to find a dead redhead hen with her neck eaten off, then I found both the ring teal and greenwing teal hens almost completely eaten, their body parts were all over the pen. A little farther into the pen I found a dead wood duck drake and chicken that had had two babies all torn apart piled into a corner. Whatever predator did this had destroyed the pen and knocked a lot of stuff down. I had two barncle goslings hatch last week and both survived this attack but this afternoon I left the pen for twenty minutes and came back to a dead gosling in the middle of the pen. Last week we had a four foot black snake get in our grow out pen and eat a cinnamon teal and pintail that were almost fully feathered then it tried to eat another teal and killed it. I think a family of raccoons were the suspects for last nights massacre any thoughts? We hadnt had this great of a year in 35 years but now predators are killing everything we worked to raise this year! Any advice would be appreciated on how to catch these coons. The pen is now a minefield due to all the traps in it so hopefully they will come back tonight!
