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  • From: "Shawnee Flowerfarmer" <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Raising poultry
  • Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:18:40 -0600

All my sympathy...I have had  this problem and the same villians were blamed: weasel, raccoon, and oddly possum.  I have never seen a possum behave in so bloodthirsty a manner but one of my Hispanic friends was adamant about it.  I did finally trap a raccoon who had been blamed for nearly a dozen murders, but I've never been sure (I think the fat fellow had been thieving my chicken feed actually).   My uncle says that it's a weasel and that they will kill as many birds as they have time for just to suck the blood; he's raised poultry in Northern Illinois since Moses was a boy. 

I know it's a horrible thing to find your carefully tended flock attacked in this way. -S

 


From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
Reply-To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Raising poultry
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 13:00:54 -0600

I think mink, weasel or another member of that family. They kill for killings sake. Where I grew up in central Illinois the farm folk were familar with them and considered them a serious threat to poultry.
 
Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Horticulture Research Center
www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 11:56 AM
Subject: [Market-farming] Raising poultry

Greetings Everyone,
 
I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this problem. My colleague in Rhode Island (zone 6) raises poultry to assist with insect control around her many gardens and she recently lost her small flock. Here is her story:
 
On Tues before Thanksgiving, we had a very rainy flooding day. My
little stream going into the pond was a river when I got home. The
fence around the pond had been washed down on one end. I only saw 10
ducks huddled by the pond. About 100 ft up I found 2 bodies. They were
not mutilated at all, not a feather missing, just a tiny scrape on each
neck. One neck was still bleeding, but both were dead.
I thought that having escaped the fence area, they had put their heads
under water to dabble around and had got caught between rocks by the
push of the flooding water and had drowned. This had happened once when
I was here to see it. With no bites, feather piles, or marks, I never
suspected animals.
Thanksgiving night the other 10 were all killed inside the locked pen.
There were no gaps that I could find. The drainage rock had not been
moved. 2 heads were eaten, and the rest lay dead, again with only
scrapes
on their nec ks. What did this? My neighbor said a mink can fit through
1 in wire, but could it get back out after eating 2 heads? I couldn't
even find any fur anywhere on the fence wire. Needless to say, there's
no point in my having ducks until I can find out what this is and kill
it.
 
Thank you, in advance, for your insight.
 


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