Disappearing chickens!

[Longlowdog]

If the chickens are not confined in a coop at night my money is on an owl. I've seen way too many decent pheasant poults taken from unroofed pens without a trace and a lot more headless corpses in netted pens.
A decent game camera with infrared flash gives a lot of answers in these cases.

 

[averageguy54]

I used to have a problem with mine disappearing as well. I discovered that fastening a row of boards on the bottom of the fence and then fastening the wire to the boards eliminated all my disappearing hen problems. You may not see any evidence of them getting under the wire but they obviously are.

 

[Paddington]

We had a problem with disappearing eggs a few years ago, the daily numbers suddenly dropped and we found eggshells in the field next to the chicken run. With an electric fence and poultry fence something was either flying in or getting under the fence. I put pot eggs in the nest boxes to confuse the thief. These disappeared ! Next step was to fasten 150mm long 10mm bolts to the pot eggs which would jam across the nest box entrances. Found a few pot eggs hanging out the front of the nest boxes for a couple of days, then the egg numbers started to increase again. What ever it was had got pee'd off and gone somewhere else for it's tea.

 

[Still Farming]

Everything and anything and 2 legged things also ???

 

[Exfarmer]

We had a problem with disappearing eggs a few years ago, the daily numbers suddenly dropped and we found eggshells in the field next to the chicken run. With an electric fence and poultry fence something was either flying in or getting under the fence. I put pot eggs in the nest boxes to confuse the thief. These disappeared ! Next step was to fasten 150mm long 10mm bolts to the pot eggs which would jam across the nest box entrances. Found a few pot eggs hanging out the front of the nest boxes for a couple of days, then the egg numbers started to increase again. What ever it was had got pee'd off and gone somewhere else for it's tea.

Rats

 

[Lili]

Rats

Squirrel