Stoat/Weasel?
Joyce Goldenlily
Posts: 1,927
My neighbour has just had two of her chickens killed inside their run, both corpses left in situ.
The large chicken was killed in the henhouse, throat ripped and left there. The smaller bantam was headless, partially pulled under the edge of the run where a very slight dip had been scratched out, the body became wedged and eventually abandoned.
Obviously not the handiwork of a fox, my neighbour went online and has decided a stoat or weasel was the attacker. I have seen small, elongated, brown animals running across the road locally, and always assumed they were stoats or weasels, I cannot tell the difference from a distant and a fleeting glimpse, but have never heard of them killing chickens.
Very upsetting because the young daughter found the carnage when she went to check for eggs.
Hopefully, the predator having been thwarted will not come back.
The large chicken was killed in the henhouse, throat ripped and left there. The smaller bantam was headless, partially pulled under the edge of the run where a very slight dip had been scratched out, the body became wedged and eventually abandoned.
Obviously not the handiwork of a fox, my neighbour went online and has decided a stoat or weasel was the attacker. I have seen small, elongated, brown animals running across the road locally, and always assumed they were stoats or weasels, I cannot tell the difference from a distant and a fleeting glimpse, but have never heard of them killing chickens.
Very upsetting because the young daughter found the carnage when she went to check for eggs.
Hopefully, the predator having been thwarted will not come back.
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It's just how it is if you keep chickens. We had one at the last house who used to hide inside a piece of drainpipe to get rabbits as they went by.
The only thing guaranteed to work is electric fencing. That was the regular advice from poultry farmers up here who showed their stock at agricultural shows.
I was the only customer there, and just caught a flash of brown running along a row of plants on a shelf about 3 foot in the air. My first thought was a rat, as i was in the middle of a city. As i turned the corner into another row of plants, i got a clear view as it ran across the ground about 10 feet away. It was brown and white as it was changing into its winter colouring. A fantastic wildlife encounter.
I will warn her to be more aggressive in her precautions. I was upset to hear what had happened because I buy my eggs from her.
https://www.vincentwildlife.ie/species/irish-stoat
Weasels are quite a bit smaller than stoats and have shorter tails.
We used to have a little family of them where I worked. The cover and habitat in the fields there were perfect for them. Thinking back - they may have been stoats rather than weasels as they were bigger, but I don't think they had the black tail tip, so maybe not. A long time ago though
Where we live is amongst fields with lots of banks, hedges, and undergrowth so ideal habitat for wildlife.
I also took one of a stoat dragging a mousetrap, with a mouse, under the edge of a raised veg bed.
I saw an elongated small black animal loping along the bottom of a bank when driving home one evening. No idea what it could be. Checked online and found it was a mink. They used to record any seen but have now stopped. They used to trap them but that seems to have stopped due to lack of funding.