[buttony22]

On Monday I lost 4 of my 5 hens and 1 of my 2 ducks, it was the most devastating thing i have dealt with as i was over the hospital with my mum so my 8 yr old daughter and 10 yr old son found them.  This was at 5 in the evening.  My daughter is having nightmares since as the fox has shown no fear and is completely brazen and was still in garden when kids went out..................i have since had to chase the fox many times he is not so brave since i sent my little yorkie after him but i am having to keep remaining birds locked up.  Is there any decent fox repellents out there that i can access that actually work.....my girls have an ok run but loved having them free range in garden.

[joyfull]

You can buy sonic fox repellants but I have no idea if they work (although the adverts all claim they do  ). Alternatively could you invest in an electric fence?
There are old fashioned ideas of male urine being sprinkled around the border to your property or bundles of human hair (if you know any hairdressers they may be able to provide some for you) but again I do not know if they really work.
Foxes are very hungry at the moment so will risk a lot of things in order to get food and now they know you have some easy pickings it may be best to keep them in their run for a while  .

[Mrs Bee]

You can buy sonic fox repellants but I have no idea if they work (although the adverts all claim they do  ). Alternatively could you invest in an electric fence?
There are old fashioned ideas of male urine being sprinkled around the border to your property or bundles of human hair (if you know any hairdressers they may be able to provide some for you) but again I do not know if they really work.
Foxes are very hungry at the moment so will risk a lot of things in order to get food and now they know you have some easy pickings it may be best to keep them in their run for a while  .

So sorry you lost your girls. Really upsetting. My sister lost her first hens to the blasted fox.

Urine and hair don't work. Sprinkling chilli powder very thickly works for a while but if you forget  to keep it up or it rains it wears off. Not sure if it would work at all if the foxes are really hungry.  Sonic option sounds a bit of a gamble to me.

 We tried prikka strips on the tops of our 6 foot fences and the b.....ds still scramble over, strips and all!
So far keeping our ladies behind an electric fence has kept them safe during the day and at night they are locked up safely in their eglu cube. We have watched quite happily at the foxes who have had experiences of the shocking kind!! Wonder if hubby could up the power for a couple of days, fried fox?

Did hear of an electrician who had his girls taken and he rigged up one of his dead chickens to the electricity supply and waited for the fox to come back and zap!

We have had to do stop letting our ladies free range as  the fox was a metre away from our hens one Sunday lunch time. I only left the kitchen, where I could see them, for a couple of minutes to collect a cook book and when I came back my husband was hurtling down the garden brandishing the  spade. Since then we keep them behind the electric fence in a generous sized part of the garden.

It was terribly upsetting watching the girls come running up in expectation of being let out and then waiting at the gate willing me to let them out. They would do this everytime I went out into the garden. I felt so damn guilty. We couldn't risk letting them out when we were in the garden either because if the doorbell went and i had to answer the door, it only takes a few minutes for a fox to strike.

Also the girls get used to coming out in the garden and expect it. If it doesn't happen they create a fuss and make me feel guilty again.

AM a bit twitchy at the moment as my sister has had her electric fence breached by the fox and her last chicken taken.

I know of someone who had one of her hens taken and she bought a fox trap and then took the fox on a long holiday and let him go. This could be an option although I believe it is illegal to let the fox go once it has been caught and it should be shot. That is what I was told when I made inquiries into buying a fox trap.

I also believe that there are pest control companies who will deal with the fox problem for yo but you have to pay and some charge you a lot of money for trapping the fox then letting it go again. Then you can have the creature finding its way back home.

Hope you find a solution that is right for you and the family. Always incredibly upsetting for the children.

[Tony H]

sorry to hear you have lost your girls, the problem with foxes is that they kill for the sake of it and will do so at the drop of a hat  my personal veiw is that foxes should be humainly culed to keep there numbers down, but i know this is a very emotive subject and everyone will have there own thoughts. I have them noise things do work for a while. The farmers i know use electric fence and find them to be the best thing, the only other way to build a secure run made with 1/2 welded wire mesh this will stop foxes and mink from getting in to them.

[buttony22]

Thank you everyone.  I think until i can build a pen with a roof i am going to have to keep girls in their run.  It is very upsetting as creatures of habit they have had freedom which at present is taken away.  The damn fox has been a regular visitor since his first strike but i am hoping that now the snow is melting he may sod off and find his own food.  I looked into trapping him and then releasing him elsewhere but there is a law about abandonment and foxes being teretorial so being killed by other foxes because of my actions would mean i was guilty of cruelty.........not sure how this would be proved unless observed but not really an option anyway.   

[viettaclark]

Foxes seem to be increasing in numbers and round here there is at least one family. I have had bad experiences with a vixen (2 hens taken last May at night) and a large dog fox recently during the day (see Fox attack posts.)
As they are very territorial you would have to eradicate the whole population for miles because wiping out a dog fox would mean another moving in and even wiping out a whole den would leave the territory ripe for re-colonising!
I don't know what the territory area is....this is a busy street but some of the large gardens are very overgrown and I have my suspicions that someone is feeding them.
I have plumped for very expensive protection for my girls and they will have to stay in the new run unless I'm with them. This isn't too bad as I'm home all day and garden alot but my awful experience (and theirs) forces this.
The fox numbers reflect the availability of food and we had dustbin men strikes for weeks with bin bags piled everywhere. There are also lots of take-aways locally and several people keep chickens which attracts all sorts of vermin such as rats. Foxes eat pretty well and it's our fault!
I still want to shoot them though......

[Mrs Bee]

Doesn't it make you mad that someone is feeding the blasted things and they still come after your chickens!

Pretty sure someone is doing the same here!
Roahld Dhal has got a lot to answer for!

It adds insult to injury when you chase them out of the garden and they mooch off  down  the garden and then stop and look at you as if to say 'yeah, wot  you gonna do about it'.

Nearly ended up on my back last night after hurtling down the garden in the slippery snow in night shirt and slippers snarling obsenities at the fox who was making free with my garden!

Wonder if barbed wire around the top of the fence might work.

The rise in the fox population in recent years is worrying. Never saw one in the towns when I was a child. Especially as they are so fearless.

Do agree about wanting to shoot the things tho'.

Hubby won't let me go down that route tho' 'cos my aim with half a brick is rubbish. He says I would be like Granny Clampet and would have all the neighbours windows out. He is probably right.

[shetan]

two weeks ago a lady came knocking on the door 'on the scrounge' for spare dog and cat food for the feral foxes. she was feeding them in her garden and actively encouraging others to do the same. i told her to bog off.

makes me really angry. shehra only rips them apart because he was bitten by one when he was 6months old. we haven't had a successful fox attack since slabbing the runs but i still remember the carnage i came home to when one killed all 8 girls and left me with 2 cockerels.

they completely ignore humans now - especially since the breeding season started. we had 2 dog foxes fighting over a vixen in our garden and our two boys had them pinned to the ground in seconds. the only reason they got away was because veer didn't know what to do with his so shehra let the one he had go in order to dispatch the other. of course veer promptly let his one go too and they both got away. you could see the hatred in shehra's face when they legged it.

sadly you can't advocate shooting them because we live in urban areas and the danger to other life a firearm poses. trapping them then means you have to dispatch them. it is illegal to poison them because of the ramifications it could have on other wildlife and you cannot interfere with an active den either.

the old boy down the road used to be a dab hand with a slingshot and would sometimes sit out all night in the summer and practice his aim. he was famous around here for leaving a huge evil fox blinded in one eye. in a weird coincidence, they would face off with each other at least once a month but when the old man died last year the fox disappeared too. its legend around the allotments here.

*sorry for the long post - you can tell i'm beginning to get bored of sitting at home all day and not having any company*

[Tony H]

unfortuanatly foxes will kill for the sake of it it doesnt matter if they are hungry or not, as said poisoning is illegle shooting isnt realy an option unless done  by someone with the knolage and acuracy to kill outright, the only real choice is to live trap but then you will have to kill it. its a big problem in some arias now that people feed them and they are becoming semi tame and show no fear of us, this is what happend to the dingo in aus and now actualy attack humans and young children are now seen as fair game to them, I know that some councils will destroy dens if in a garden but realy all that does is make them move.

[Mrs Bee]

two weeks ago a lady came knocking on the door 'on the scrounge' for spare dog and cat food for the feral foxes. she was feeding them in her garden and actively encouraging others to do the same. i told her to bog off.

makes me really angry. shehra only rips them apart because he was bitten by one when he was 6months old. we haven't had a successful fox attack since slabbing the runs but i still remember the carnage i came home to when one killed all 8 girls and left me with 2 cockerels.

they completely ignore humans now - especially since the breeding season started. we had 2 dog foxes fighting over a vixen in our garden and our two boys had them pinned to the ground in seconds. the only reason they got away was because veer didn't know what to do with his so shehra let the one he had go in order to dispatch the other. of course veer promptly let his one go too and they both got away. you could see the hatred in shehra's face when they legged it.

sadly you can't advocate shooting them because we live in urban areas and the danger to other life a firearm poses. trapping them then means you have to dispatch them. it is illegal to poison them because of the ramifications it could have on other wildlife and you cannot interfere with an active den either.

the old boy down the road used to be a dab hand with a slingshot and would sometimes sit out all night in the summer and practice his aim. he was famous around here for leaving a huge evil fox blinded in one eye. in a weird coincidence, they would face off with each other at least once a month but when the old man died last year the fox disappeared too. its legend around the allotments here.

*sorry for the long post - you can tell i'm beginning to get bored of sitting at home all day and not having any company*

Perhaps the way to go is getting dogs then. Pity the OH is allergic to them. I too, have no time for the people who feed the damn things. The rows I used to have with my mum about her putting food out for them. She has since changed her tune since two foxes wrecked her rockery looking for more things to eat.

So far we haven't lost any of our girls apart from natural causes. We have an electric fence round our eglu cube but have been a little twitchy recently because  a fox breached my sister's electric fence defences and carried off her last remaining chicken. She has lost four of hers now.
Touch wood we have learned from her. She got chooks first.

I loved your long post. The old boy story reminded me of my grandad who would do the same with his catapult to the neighbours cat, who would come and pee over his windows as soon as he had cleaned them. He was a dead shot and always got him right up the backside.

He swore that cat waited for him to finish the windows and then came and peed on them. It was all out war between them.

It is actually very worrying about the way they are becoming so tame. We all saw the news about the 2 babes that were attacked by foxes.

EVen if the poisoning option wasn't illegal, wouldn't want to do that because of my hedgehogs.

The trapping and shooting tho'.................... I wonder if there is a course for that. LOL

[shetan]

not all dogs would behave as shehra does and it scares me s***less everytime he corners one in case it gets the better of him...but as my oh says, our boy is a big lad and seems to have the technique down to perfection.

when he was bitten as a pup there was a puncture wound on his upper lip that nearly went all the way through. i cried and cried when it wouldn't stop bleeding and was worrying about rabies. since then he seems to prefer to flatten them on their sides and then rip the shoulder out before finishing it off. he only ever let one get away which was found dead in the morning over the allotment fence.

since the chap on the other side has been gone he goes out every night and does 'bark duty' from about half 5ish til 9ish. i let him out at intervals so it doesn't annoy the neighbours and we are honorary members of the allotments and were given a key to do summer evening patrols with him. apparently the cubs use freshly dug/planted earth as sand pits and dig everything up before leaving little black presents.

foxes are entitled to live free and wander as much as anyone but is there anyone out there who actually appreciates the surge in their numbers? or are we all just biased.

guess what the sunday family film is this week..........