Friday, July 7, 2017

Missing ducks

This morning I went out to find one of my Pekin ducks covered in blood * and the two runner ducks missing along with another female. I can't find them anywhere.

I washed her off as best I could and put blukote on the wounds.  She's missing a lot of skin on the back of her neck, front of her throat and along one hip. Just torn off skin. I didn't see puncture marks.

 I will admit to being super pissed that I'm down three females, might have to end up culling a fourth all the while the drake saunders in this morning like "hey, what's up? Breakfast time?" Thanks for doing your job and protecting your flock. Useless.

The only thing I've seen on the game camera is a raccoon and it wasn't even a big one. Would a single raccoon have done this?  To four birds? A dog? Do we possibility have a coyote?

Shit.

* She died two days later.

2 comments:

  1. I've had and issues with raccoons and my chickens, how ever, raccoon tend to rip the heads off animals, not rip there skin up, i am missing four of my runners 3 males 1 female, and they had nothing wrong an hour before going missing, i didn't hear them yell and i cant find feathers, whats helped with raccoons is live traps and arm traps, (they mostly go for cat food)

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    1. So sorry about your ducks. It is SO frustrating. I like using cat food but we have too many neighborhood house cats on our property. What also works well, I swear, is marshmallows. A friend of the family who traps tipped me off to that. Raccoons cannot resist a marshmallow. Hope things turn around for you.

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