Life and Death on the Farm

Sad to report this morning that the one little chick that hatched about a month ago was killed over night inside the chicken house.  I found his half eaten body inside the house this morning. He was alive and well with his mother when I locked up last night, but not there at the door this morning, anxious to be outside and hunting for bugs with mother hen ever watchful at his side.
My first thought was that one of the big roosters killed him. An investigation of the chicken house however, uncovered a small hole about two inches wide in the hardware cloth covering the ventilation window on the lower west side of the chicken house and the body was found just a few inches from the hole. The hole had been made from the outside because the wire was pushed in. Hardware cloth is pretty tough stuff. We use it instead of poultry wire ( or net as it is called sometimes) because raccoons can tear open poultry wire with their bare "hands". 
None of the other chickens were disturbed but the body was left near the hole, gutted.  My first thought was a weasel. They are small enough to get through the hole in the wire, but weasels just usually suck the blood from a hole in the neck and leave the body.  Raccoons usually gut the birds and often try to take the carcass with them, but the hole in the wire was way too small for any raccoons. So I will conclude it was some type of weasel like creature that can tear through hardware cloth! I don't want to close up the window as its critical to the ventilation for the house, but I need a barrier similar to hardware cloth with a very small grid.  I'll be headed for Lowe's this morning to find a screen door cover and hope that that does the trick.  I'm concerned for the rest of the birds as I have hardware cloth covered doors and windows elsewhere on the house and once a weasel finds a way in I'm afraid it will be back for more chicken dinners.  Will keep you posted.

The little guy was twice this size when he was killed last night. He'd grown really quickly and would have been a beautiful rooster .