Hollowed out chicken after marten attack

This videos shows the effect of a marten attack on a chicken. Most people didn't believe me when I described what I have found in the chicken coup when a marten has eaten a chicken.
So when I found this dead chicken with clear signs of a marten attack, I decided to make this video show it.
Video by: Outdoors in the Low Countries
Music: www.purple-planet.com, www.bensound.com/royalty-free...

[@whiteblackbird8494]

Hallo Sjef, Voor dit probleem weet ik als volièrehouder wel de oplossing. Onderaan het gaas tegels of planken leggen (om het gras weg te houden) en dan daar dan vlak boven op ca.10 cm. hoogte schrikdraad spannen. Eventueel een tweede draad ergens halverwege of aan de bovenkant van de volière. Als je het helemaal goed wilt doen en ook geen last van bijv. ratten wilt hebben, gebruik dan fijnmaziger gaas en graaf dit onderaan tot een halve meter in de grond. Succes!

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

Dankjewel Robert voor de tips. Ik ga er mee aan de slag. Ratten heb ik inderdaad ook al op bezoek gehad.

[@tayori3ryokou]

This just happened to one of our chickens as well! 😥 Found her without head in the morning 😲 not even blood anywhere 😲 What worked against the marten for you? The electric fence solution?

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

In the mean time I have lost several chickens on martens in that coop. The only thing that protects them is the coop with these small bars like you see in this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3Kllp-ceL2Yeqs. But a few days ago a hawk pulled out the bars and took a chicken. So now I reinforced it by steel brackets that prevents the bars from being pulled out. The story never ends.... My plan is to create a much larger coop using mesh panels instead of chicken wire type of closing. But that is quite a large project.

[@tayori3ryokou]

@@OutdoorsintheLowCountries Thank you for your reply and the tips! 🙂 Yes, we gotta keep outsmarting these creatures 🙂 We have lived in our house for 30 years now, and have never had an issue with a predator, up until this marten. 😲 We only had a hedgehog 🦔family take shelter in the chicken coop 🙂 that was rather sweet, we let them stay, then they left on their own after a while.

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

@@tayori3ryokou Same story on this side. I'm having chickens all my life from very young age. Never had any problems with predators. Only the last few years this has changed. First the foxes came along; but a fox is quite easy to keep out. Then wild cats; a little bit harder but also relatively easy to keep them out. Next the hawks and other birds of prey; quite difficult to keep them out because you need to create a top side protection. The result was a strong decrease of chicken coop from 30 x 30 m to 3 x 3 m. Then the martens: normal sized wire fence they still can get through. Thus the mesh should be very small. So the chicken coop has now reduced further to 2 x 0.6 m, which was originally meant for protecting the very small chicks against crows etc. And even there they weren't safe since a hawk pulled out the metal mesh from the wooden frame, so I reinforced all meshes with strong steel brackets. So my plan is now to build a chicken coop from strong steel mesh panels with relatively small mesh widths. Not sure yet when this project will start though, since many other projects are still running as well. 🙂

[@patriciamercer9960]

Maybe electric fence . Good luck!

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

Thanks. Good idea as well. Had that in the past to keep out the foxes, but changed the fence and didn't need it anymore.

[@patriciamercer9960]

@@OutdoorsintheLowCountries I hope you don't lose anymore chickens. Maybe some mousetraps that will make a sudden movement and noise (maybe use those snap pops for little pop guns for noise).

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

Interesting and creative ideas. Thanks.

[@davidbauman4705]

Have to use chicken wire

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

Thanks for the idea!

[@OutdoorsintheLowCountries]

I'm also considering fence panels. These are more expensive but also more robust. Especially for the top side this could be interesting.