urban foxed

[hedgerow pete]

fox 5 chickens 1 ( left)

flipping thing i have wooden sides and carpets so he cant go under and the whole roof is covered as well as the sides and the thing managed to chew his way through a soft spot on the plastic netting and slaughtered every thing bar one chicken.

so it looks as if i am going to Penkridge this wednesay to top up the chicken pens.

what anoyes me is because the old fox could never get in and there fore ate the rats he was tolaratted but he died of the cold winter and a new youngest has moved in to the allotments.

now since i live in brum and the hunt does not come this way and we have enough shotguns floating about in the day i shall have to give him the badger treatment, three chrushed paracetimols and a tin of tuna works just as well for cats dogs badgers and flippin un welcome foxes.

once he has realised that the pen is a food source you will never stop him trying to get in, so does anyone want a fox coat for easter????

 

[Nomadickarl]

Sad news. The joys of the urban fox.

I have been passed a very good tip by a farmer friend of mine (who also hunts on horseback!) to deal with foxes in a relatively small area i.e. not a large open space such as a farm. This is to urinate (must be male pee pee) in the area of the site you wish to deter the fox from. Since doing this we have not seen a fox in our garden and when we had the snow, which was on the ground for a good couple of weeks, there were no traces of fox. Of course it is not fool proof and the urinating part is a night time activity! I was also told to put human hair into old pairs of tights and hang them up near my hen house.

Again, sorry. I'd be gutted if I lost mine even though they are not laying at the moment and the pot is calling them.

 

[Chris B]

I've heard lion poo also does the job, if you can get it.

I've had night raids from foxy too on more than one occasion. At least 3 times killing everything except 1 bird. Sounds like it's a fox instinct to leave a survivor to repopulate?

 

[Midland Beek]

I know someone who was convinced a fox was taking his chickens and was baffled as to how it was getting into his pen.

... until he saw a mink turn up one day.

 

[hedgerow pete]

dont go there with the evil mink, i used to live in south warwickshire when moronic muppets under the banner of the animal rights protesters decided it was ok to release 6,000 mink from the local farmer.

alll this muppets ended up doing was stripping an area of 20 miles on any animal small enough for them to take, the farmer should have spent two cartridges shooting these idiots rather than thousands of cartridges shooting the mink.

i have heard about lion poo and there is west midland sarfari park not to far away but they sell every thing at such stupid money that its to exspensive( i would think its cheaper to collect it your self lol)

as for human wee there enough of that going into the compost bin so i will divert some, we use the watering can rather than the darkness, slightly more polite ha ha ha ha

 

[trapperman]

I have lost countless chickens over the last few years whilst letting them free range on my holding, they were taking them during the day so i have now built a big pen with 6` high wire and have a fox wire set permently on each side.

i caught this big dog fox a few weeks ago, again during the day.

shame but its the only way once they know where your chickens are.

 

[Tom Bick]

now since i live in brum and the hunt does not come this way and we have enough shotguns floating about in the day i shall have to give him the badger treatment, three chrushed paracetimols and a tin of tuna works just as well for cats dogs badgers and flippin un welcome foxes.

once he has realised that the pen is a food source you will never stop him trying to get in, so does anyone want a fox coat for easter????

Or even Cat, dog and badger as you seem to be insinuating pleas tell me you dont poison all of the above as it seems to read that way

 

[hedgerow pete]

I know what you mean once they know there food thats it every single day they are trying to get in.

my pen has a pallet bottom half about three foot tall with a carpet spreading out from it so they cant dig underneth it then there is another three foot of chicken wire mesh to make the sides 7 foot tall and then i have spread over the top a close knitt mesh, the same stuff you might see on scaffoldings on building sites, in this way the chickens are protected day and night.

when i first had chickens the fox would turn up and walk past me to get the pens and the local moggies(who also want shooting ) have been interested at times

the thing is all the local cat population want to feed on is black bin bags and they dont like rats as they have to work at catching them, but the fox used to do the ratting so i allowed them to live on the allotment, because a soon as he dropped dead last year the rats went up ten fold.

we had a new breeding pair come on in the spring but they have died in the snow but this new fox is well in trouble now he has upset the big fella,

thing is i cant shoot them at the allotments nor can i set dogs onto him and i am unable to deal with a trap caught fox for those reasons so its going to be paracitomal time

my other problem is that the allotment is a mile away , i used to let the out and then lock them up but the fox would visit durring the day time and so we went for the completely enclosed pens and for 6 years it worked every time its just this time the fox made a hole in the top net to get in and then dug out under the pallet sides and then pushed the carpet away (it was only designed to stop him going from the outside not the inside

View attachment 3159
this is the inside veiw of the duck area in the chicken pen so you can see the sides and the top net
View attachment 3160

this is the outside view showing the sides and the carpets around the base

 

[Foxylad]

Strong unfamiliar smells will deter a fox ie creosote or used oil. But if there is a food source you'll be hard pushed to keep him out.
I would recommend, strong 3" 6' rabbit mesh dug 12 inch in and another 3" 6' mesh on top making it 6 foot. With the top net being slightly baggy and with the top 6 inch turned out to stop him climbing over. Plastic 6 foot netting for the top is becoming popular. Its cheep and lighter than wire.
Electric fencing works well a single strand a foot off the ground and a foot from the fence. Rechargeable pack are fairly cheep but a fence will last years.
In an urban environment killing one fox will only solve the problem for a short time. The vacuum will shortly be filled by another.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Rotten luck HP
I use a foxwatch. Might be worth adding to your ammunition.

 

[Nomadickarl]

Pete. Another one, that I was told about but have yet to try, was to fill old bottles with water (your general everyday 2.5l coke bottle types). Then move these around your site every so often. Apparently foxes are creatures of habit (that explains the common exit and entry sites in urban gardens etc) and the bottles spook them out as its new, and before they have chance to accept them you have moved them elsewhere.

 

[psafloyd]

How does he compare to this feller?

http://bit.ly/e7PXlD

 

[hedgerow pete]

firstly to tom blick, to me personaly there is NO DIFFERANCE between a cat, a fox, a rat, a badger,a mink, they are all vermin that should be shot on site,

its just i dont have any thing to shoot them with nor would i break the law if i did,

and apart from being protected by laws, if you are no of the many fools that think badgers are cute and wonderfull you should try meeting one,

i would rather cover my self in bisto and stand infront of a pack of dobermans than get close to a badger even rats are cleaner and less aggressive

. also where i live in brum we have a massive problem with wild stray feral cats not badgers, neither the rspca nor the council will do any thing about them,

so much damage is done and the noise and mess is unreal the sooner there is some form of controls put on them the better, the more dead cats where i live the better, i wouldn't mind but they dont even do the ratting they are so well fed from the bins

as for digging the wire netting underneth, why? there is three foot of carpet to stop that as long as he stays out side.

theres loads of urban foxes where i live so i am not fussed about getting rid of this one, someone will soon take its place, the trick is to make sure that they never get inside again, as with the last lot once they have given up they will leave it alone and go and chase rats instead,

as for that big fox i am not surprised when you think of all the idiots in the towns feeding the things with bin bags and proper food, what do you expect,

thing is, every ***** is thinking of wind in the willows and beatrix potter untill they suddenly find out its more like peter cushing and vincent price

 

[Brosville]

Well, I don't live in a town (the "balance" is probably a lot different), but I do keep chooks (at one point, 2,500 of them on free-range) and haven't lost any to foxes (or badgers or anything else) for some 30 years.......
At the moment, we just have 6 bantams and a cockerel housed in a moveable "Sussex Ark" surrounded by electric fencing - 'er indoors gives our local fox a Marmite sarnie every night (so he's fed and not hungry), and we have badger runs throughout our ground........ (there is an awful lot of tosh talked about Mr Brock!), and have never had chooks, crops or hives disturbed.

I can understand people becoming homicidal following a fox strike - one morning I went to open up my chicken house of 18 Marans that I'd reared from chicks to find a fox had got underneath, pulled their legs down through the slats and eaten them, leaving the birds alive....... But on sober reflection, it was my own silly fault, so I learnt my lesson, and swore it'd never happen again...
At that time, the classic advice was to have a 7' netting fence, dug into the ground by at least 6", with at least 2 strands of electric fence outside it - I found that electric sheep netting and a terrier "on patrol" during the day was most effective - at night, the housing was (and still is) totally fox-proof.
No point blaming wild animals for taking an easy option to feed themselves and their young.

Nature is indeed red in tooth and claw - of a summer's night, all I have to do is stand at the back door to hear the screams of various animals coming to a gory end - and when it's time for young badgers to move out and find their own place, it can be something like a full-volume screaming match worthy of Eastenders....... and the funniest thing is to see a townie blanche when a vixen calls......

 

[hedgerow pete]

very true brosville its not the foxs fault, its mine for makeing it posible, i should have recheck the netting, but of course the one day you dont he does!!

the problem is now that once he has done it he will all ways try it so its time to go mr fox

 

[Brosville]

Once they've got in, they'll be back! Any danger of an electric fencer unit and some netting?

 

[hedgerow pete]

out of the price range, i have been watching flea bay for a year trying to get hold of a cheap battery jobie

 

[Brosville]

best deal I found was a "Shrike" from Mole Valley - http://www.molevalleyfarmers.com/mvf/store/category/battery-energisers-and-kits

 

[RoofTops]

We lost one hen to what I think was a badger early in the year. Our fault for not locking the hen house. It dragged it all round the orchard looking for a way out, trying to burrow under the fence at one point. It then seemed to give up and tried to bury it. I guess it might have been a young fox but it only took one and left the other 4 whch does not seem normal fox behaviour. Interestingly it took the only white hen - perhaps it was more visible in the dark.

Cats are our main problem. Any beds in the veg garden have to be covered by chicken wire until the crops begin to grow otherwise they dig holes and c***p in them. The dog chases them off but they come skulking back when he's not around.

 

[hedgerow pete]

roof tops i though kingbridge was to posh to have stay cats,

i know what you mean, the amount of times we find piles everywhere. my favorite trick is to go out and get the largest biggest most powerfull water pistol you can find and then when we go out for a fag at any time we just blast away even over the neighbours gardens as no one like the filthy things around here,

ps, its also great fun!!