Thanks for the messages of chicken solidarity, the girls appreciate them greatly... :-D

So - ChickenMissing turned up. She was just hiding, or so it appears. ChickenInjured is doing much better, she's eating and drinking, at least a bit, so she should get better pretty quickly.

We are almost certain it's a cat - there are zillions of them around here, and we've never seen or heard anything that would suggest foxes in the area. Rusty-the-ex-chicken-farmer has seen the aftermath of plenty of fox attacks, and he reckons it's quite a different M.O. This is good, cos I reckon a fox would be more likely to come back and try again.

Anyways, we think that it will all come good in the end.