[Eve]

Our neighbours' 4 campbell ducks disappeared at some point yesterday afternoon before 5:30pm from their courtyard garden (at 5:30pm they came home and locked the door to the predator proof barn where the ducks always slept, assuming they were there, it was pitch dark). 


Foxes would be the obvious culprit: a piece of timber under the fence had slipped allowing access, there's fox pooh for the first time ever in their courtyard, and foxes are here every night.
Or a stoat, but all 4 birds got taken in one go so less likely.


But there are 2 problems:


1) there are practically no feathers around, nothing like the scene that would normally greet you if chickens had been attacked
2) it's going to sound incredibly silly and yes, we k.n.o.w foxes come at any time of the day, they do on the fields we rent barely a few miles away from us, but in the few years that we've lived here we've never ever seen them h.e.r.e before late at night (and they are not exactly shy when we do see them). It would be such a coincidence that yesterday they came several hours early, it seems too big a coincidence.


So there's this niggling worry that it might have been theft rather than attack, even though our lights were on and cars are on the driveway. We live fairly isolated, lots of walkers but not at night. Our neighbours have a dog but had taken it to the vet around the time the ducks disappeared.


But I have no experience with ducks and maybe a lack of feathers is normal? Maybe ducks simply don't loose them as easily? It's the lack of feathers that baffles me.


Any thoughts, please?

[twizzel]

I lost all of my ducks a couple of years ago- the first visit the fox dug under a house and up through the (pretty solid) wooden floor, taking 5 drakes that were nearly fit to kill. Not a single feather left, I opened up the pop hole the next morning and nothing came out, looked in the house bit and saw what had happened. He unfortunately came back about 10 days later and took all of my breeding ducks in broad day light, killed a few chickens which he left but the ducks had again vanished. Their wings were clipped too so they couldn't have flown off. Later we found it was a dog and vixen working together as a pair, we caught the dog fox and the vixen never returned.

[Eve]

Thank you, Twizzel, in a strange sort of way it's reassuring to know a fox attack is more likely than theft.
Sorry to hear about your ducks.

[Womble]

Do ducks loose a lot less feathers than chickens when attacked?

In a word, yes!

[Eve]

Thank you, Womble.
So it was sod's law, then, the one time our neighbours were out until 5:30pm...

[doganjo]

Foxes also patrol regularly - they just keep their heads down in daylight - as I found to  my cost

[Womble]

Indeed. He probably came past every night, and just eventually got lucky.

[Marches Farmer]

Foxes have a patrol round and once they know where there's a potential meal that place is always included in the round, until they get lucky.  Mink and polecats will also kill and remove birds rather than eat them on the spot.