Red fecker took off with two of my chickens this morning @ 8:30…… I really do hate foxes. Eldest daughter saw the little bastid trotting off as she went out to get in the car for school 🙁
Going to wait in ambush with my gun tonight (for about 15 mins or until too cold). Off to get two more chickies this avo first though.

There is a dead fox laid out over the wall on the bridleway at the bottom of our track. It’s been there 2 weeks and there was another one about a month ago! Don’t know who’s doing it but at least our 4 hens are a bit safer,

C

Noooooo, they are lovely little fluffy wuffy scoundrels who are to be loved.

If you left a nice meal in front of a hungry person while you went out, would you expect it to be there when you got back?

Foxes are just resourceful hunters, not mindless killers. Domestic cats kill a lot more birds (not hens necessarily) than foxes, but you don’t hear people demonizing them in the same way. Don’t keep hens if you can’t stand losing a few would be my advice, or beef up your coop at the very least.

I would have thought a human could build a bird cage that could out wit a fox – but maybe not.

wish one would eat next-door’s cockerel 😐

Foxes are just resourceful hunters, not mindless killers

wrong, a Fox will often kill every hen in the hen house. Seen it with my own eyes.

Fox in doing-what-comes-naturally shocker.

You’re gonna want to beef up the chicken run before you get some more, surely?

Foxes are funny. They make little barky squealy noise when my dog catches them.*

*I do not condone this behaviour. She is always kept on a lead, the foxes come up to her, honest.

We have lost a few when it’s daylight and the hens are outside. The fox that time killed about 6 and only took one away.

They’re not just resourceful hunters, they are a bit naughty too….

C

wrong, a Fox will often kill every hen in the hen house. Seen it with my own eyes.

Yeah, and then it will come back and get them all over time, unless you clear up their spoils. They don’t just kill for fun.

we had a fox take one of our chickens last year, couldn’t get the chicken out of the garden. and it was hanging around out the back, so we went out with the dogs……….

…. who got silly excited about us shouting “get the fox” and just ran after each other instead!

wrong, a Fox will often kill every hen in the hen house. Seen it with my own eyes.

Very true. They are not cuddly dog like animals like some think they are, they are scrawny little thugs who will kill everything in a chicken coup and take 1 bird. Doesn’t matter how many.

As Torminalis says, they will kill them all, but come back and get them given time. Unfortunately for them they usually get disturbed and so don’t finish the job, and so get branded as mindless killers.

They don’t just kill for fun.

Nobody said they did, and all Sharkbait will be doing is protecting his property. Can do the time etc…. 😉

Woody: I don’t like cats either!

Run has had further fortifications so hopefully better now. We’ve lost about 7 chickens to the fox over the last 6 months….. I know it’s not really the foxes fault but they are certainly a pest.

a Fox will often kill every hen in the hen house. Seen it with my own eyes.

me too..

Foxes are vermin.

Going to wait in ambush with my gun tonight (for about 15 mins or until too cold).

All perfectly legal, you just can’t dress up in a red coat and do it in a posh way, is all. (For some obscure reason).

No news there TBH.

Had to tidy up the mess in a friend’s garden this summer after Mr Fox took the heads off all of their chickens (which had been loose in the garden that afternoon). They immediately went out and bought a proper chicken house and extended the run. Mr Fox may well have returned since, but certainly hasn’t got even close to harming them.

If you’ve got chickens, give them a proper “home” to live in, and follow every sensible/common sense measure to ensure they remain alive. Simples.

This post is just admission that you’re incapable of outwitting a small furry animal, I’d not be yelling about it on a forum 🙂 Just secure them properly. As above, the only reason they kill them all and only take a few is because you clean them all up/hang about angry before they can return to get more.

It’s you against nature. You lost. Try again.

Nobody said they did, and all Sharkbait will be doing is protecting his property

I am on a very strict low-sophistry diet so I will not argue beyond this one post but… when people say daft things like ‘foxes will kill a thousand chickens and then only eat one’ the implication is that they are doing it for sport and that the food is an afterthought. Otherwise they would just kill what they need and leave the rest of them alone so I do consider that people are suggesting that foxes will kill for the foxy equivalent of fun.

Imagine you go into an off license and they have a thousand bottles of Dalwhinnie going for 10p each. I would buy them all on the spot, take a couple and then come back with a small van for the rest at a later date. Now if some busy body decided to interfere and clear up all of my lovely whisky before I could get back I would be mighty peeved. Then if they accused me of buying all of the Whisky and then wasting it I would be doubly peeved.

or something.

This behaviour is not limited to foxes. Most predators when faced with a captive abundance will do the same thing. (ie kill everything)

“Domestic cats kill a lot more birds (not hens necessarily) than foxes, but you don’t hear people demonizing them in the same way” don’t get me started on bloody cats the only problem with the fox that sunbathes in my garden is that it does nothing to the neighbours cats who make frequent improper use of my veg beds.

On the kill every chicken point very often when i go to the supermarket i buy more than one meal. Given the chance to do so any hunter will sort out the maximum calories for the minimum effort, foxes like high meat so will kill all with the intention of returning.

To the Op you do have my sympathy we want to keep chickens but given our local fox have decided not to get into an endless war.

Anyway foxes don’t taste as good as chickens

foxes can drive vans ? 😯

not entirely surprising I suppose

Just laughable that anyone thinks a fox is murderous and wasteful. Hysterical. Coming from us humans, the most murderous and wasteful species on the planet.

<nods sagely in agreement with glenp>

My colleague told us this morning that a fox attacked her cat last night which is now in thhe vets seriously injured. I wonder why it did that, do they eat cats? Anyway foxes are great in a kind of weird screamy at 3am kind of way.

Predators fighting over food most likely. Was it a ginger cat? Maybe the fox mistook it for a lady fox, and you know, tried to do the foxy do with it? 🙂

PMSL @ Woody!

If you’ve got chickens, give them a proper “home” to live in, and follow every sensible/common sense measure to ensure they remain alive. Simples.

They have a very proper home – very solid built coop with automatic door closer/opener (so I can’t forget to close them in and a big run with trees/bushes and a perimeter of 50m electric netting. Fox got in underneath.
At least the chickens got to live their lives in a nice place unlike many others.

I am told it was indeed a ginger cat. You may be right possibly a Mr Magoo of the fox world.

I followed a fox over the foot/bike bridge on my way home from work yesterday.

That’s about 300′ from where our 7 chickens live.

Foxes are amazingly resourceful. When we lived in Somerset, many years back my folks kept geese, chickens and ducks. They had a massive chicken-wire enclosure, built by my stepdad. He got loads of advice before building it and the wire was dug into a foot deep trench underground.

The fox still managed to get in at least once a month – always went for the chickens – must have been a soft touch compared to the viscious geese!

He got fed up and shot it eventually, but another soon took its place….

My cat had a fight with a fox, damn noisy.
She’s fine though, few scrapes and bashes, feisty little thing.

any tips on encouraging foxes to leave our intensly gravel based back garden alone and stop using it as a giant litter tray?

Apparantly foxes will not go anywhere near Llamas as they get the sh1t kicked out of them 🙂
One of those in your back garden should do the trick….. there again I bet Llama poo is pretty big.

Natural order, although they are noisy when they shag.

Shame about your chickens though, but I fear you will be at war with Renard the Fox for a while.

The fox situation there sounds like the coyote situation here in New Mexico. Resourceful, wiley animals who come into the city for breakfast, lunch and dinner, be it fruit from trees, cats or small dogs, dogfood left outside, etc. and just about anything else edible.
Coyotes can clear a 5-6 foot fence like it wasn’t there to snag the occasional small dog or cat left unattended. I constantly see signs posted on light-poles for “missing pet” with a picture of a Yorkie, Chihuahua, or similar small dogs as well as cats, but the coyotes never seem to return them to their owners.
We do have a few foxes, but the coyotes are the overly dominant predator in and around populated area and keep the fox population down.

we had a fox take one of our chickens last year, couldn’t get the chicken out of the garden. and it was hanging around out the back, so we went out with the dogs……….

…. who got silly excited about us shouting “get the fox” and just ran after each other instead!

So a fox killed your chicken which gave you the hump so you thought you’d redress the balance by setting your two dogs on the fox?

Right…