We lost a lot of 7 week old pheasant a couple weeks ago. The debate is either fisher or otter (the females are feeding young and we found on chick over by the water). The animal itself killed only 8 or 10. But it came at night and pheasant have terrible night vision and spook easy. It created a panic in the pen and we lost hundreds by flying into the fencing, netting, each other, and posts and breaking their necks. It happened when the birds were the most vulnerable. The birds were going to be moved to a larger pen in a few days so they were fairly dense, if it had happened in the larger pen not so much collateral damage would have occurred because of more space. If the birds had been older the roosters would have been able to fight back the animal.
So we just yesterday we just replaced the bottom third of our pen from chicken wire to vinyl coated welded wire, 16 ga 1"x1". The stuff is not cheap but other bird farmers I spoke to all swore by it, one has had in for 12 years and another a decade, and another 9 years, all with no problem whatsoever. So hopefully this will prevent future disasters.
