[ballingall]

   Sorry to hear that. If I had any Cream Legbars I'd offer you some.
 
 
Beth

[suziequeue]

Yes - sorry to hear about your loss. We have started having regular visits from the fox too. Here's one from yesterday morning :-(

Daylight Fox Attack / Free Range Chicken Raid In Broad Daylight Caught on CCTV Camera

Foxes are like the Taliban. He will know exactly what your routine is and what your defences are. He'll sit and wait until you slip up and then exploit your own weaknesses without even trying.

[darkbrowneggs]

Sorry to hear that Bloomer.  Its a horrid thing for a chicken keeper to have a fox attack.  I found the only way to be completely secure was with electric poultry netting on a mains energiser rather than battery, but it sounds as though your usual pens are working well.  Apparently foxes call each night and check for weak defences, or even in the day when they have cubs.  So just one day/night of a little less vigilance gives them the chance they were waiting for


There is a girl in Herefordshire who had some of my Cream Legbar Breeding stock which are proving excellent layers and easy to hatch.  Her number is on my old Blue-Eggs website which I have kept running. 


Are you dry incubating the Marans eggs.  That was the only way I ever had good success rates, but damp weather can tend to negate that unless you are hatching indoors, and even then it has an effect.

[Stereo]

Know how you feel. I lost a pen of leghorns earlier in autumn after raising them all year. They were just about to lay!  It's sickening when you see it. I see it as my fault. Didn't do a good enough job of keeping the fox out. As it is he got trapped inside the electric net by the look of it and spent a long time trying to get out with much digging and scraping around the outside.  Didn't take a single bird, just killed them all. Again, my fault.

You can't bitter about the actions of a wild animal, they are just doing what they do. You have to work harder to keep them out. In my case I wasn't checking the electric net often enough and it was shorting on a post so wasn't working well. Lesson learned and a second electric fence installed around the field boundary.

Foxes are an important part of our environment and killing them is only going to result in another moving in who may not be trained to your electric fence. 

Last people I would call is the hunt. I spend enough time defending my stock from their out of control, marauding hounds and fixing hedges after the idiots who follow them have clambered all over them.

[doganjo]

No they aren't evil, no more than my dogs are - but they go into a killing frenzy - just as my dogs would given the chance.  I don't hate my dogs, because I can control them (to an extent anyway  ) but I really hate foxes, and wolves, and especially the stupid people who feed them thinking they're cute cuddly things!  They are killers - not evil in the human sense of the word, but still killers. 

[Womble]

I'd advise everyone to leave a permanently set fox trap near your poultry.

So practically speaking, what would you bait a permanent fox trap with? 

[bloomer]

well i have some dead chickens i could use...


sorry thats poor taste but its my thread and im feeling a bit better still gutted but i have stopped sulking for now at least!

[Womble]

And we have a trap you can borrow if you wish, though as yet I've never caught a fox in it.

The reason for my question is that in the summer, the bait goes maggotty within a few days, hence I'm curious to know what bait one might use in a permanently set trap?

[suziequeue]

This time we have used one of the chickens left over - but I agree  - not so easy in the summer when they all go maggoty in a couple of days.

[plumseverywhere]

When the fox wiped out 13 of ours we used our dead chickens to bait the trap... first of all leaving them near the trap and eventually we had 1 in the back compartment.    I know it seems weird using them but it felt like their deaths were not completely in vain this way.
I should add that my 8 year old found our decimated flock, not long after her pet lamb was PTS after a dog attack (she actually suffered alopecia from stress bless her!).   Eventually a stinky, deer head lured the fox in, he was swiftly and humanely despatched and our current flock live on.   
Worst part, I found when you have children , is that feeling of it being our fault and their upset is due to our lack of fencing. Then I felt guilty that our chickens had suffered due to human negligence and then I felt really hacked off that someone was found dumping city foxes on land next to ours and neighbours were feeding the things 
To the fox, he is just visiting a supermarket for food for his family I suppose!

[waterbuffalofarmer]

I'd advise everyone to leave a permanently set fox trap near your poultry.

So practically speaking, what would you bait a permanent fox trap with?

I used to use electric fencing and foxes never came near it, it also kept one of my mischevious dogs away, which I sold eventually, which kept on trying to kill my hens.

[ShaunP]

We have lost a few [size=78%]Ducks and Turkeys to the fox in the last month. As gutted as I was I always consider it to be my fault as has been said in earlier post it is up to me to protect what what I am rearing. I consider it to be an occupational hazard as I like my poultry to free range, but it is usually down to poor fencing that lets the bugger in!!! I changed all my electric fencing last year after 2 attacks, nothing better than hearing a fox squeal when they find that a new strand of wire has stopped them getting supper!!![/size]
[/size]

[Porterlauren]

Most be that time of year. Just had the local free range chook farm on the phone again.

16000 hens.

Started losing a few a week ago.

Had one big dog fox in the trap pretty much straight away, thought that would sort it. It didn't. Went out with the lamp, sat up and had a squeak, three sets of eyes came in. One got too bold and met her maker, but the other two were not playing ball.

Still having problems, so i'm off again now to see if I can catch up with the others.

[HesterF]

  So sorry - it's that horrid sinking feeling as you realise what has happened. We had two lucky cockerels who managed to escape the marauding fox somehow whilst their brothers lay dead around them. The kids have been more upset by my killing of the turkeys than they were by the fox though.

On the subject of traps, my friends set one having lost a series of chickens to the fox and ended up catching the next door neighbour's poodle (apparently a tiny boy but she breeds enormous labradoodles). I don't believe the dog has been going after the chickens but the picture of them finding a poodle in the trap is still enough to make me giggle.

[Womble]

LOL. Please tell me there are photos!!

The only thing we've ever caught in our trap is our cat. You could see the footprints in the snow as he carefully padded all around it and checked it out, followed by an almighty panic and sprint straight out through the mesh on the side (we made it just big enough for a cat, having seen this coming!). He's never been near it again though.

Using fox killed chickens does seem the perfect thing to do. We actually had half a dozen of them in our freezer at one point but since each one only lasted a few days before it got revolting, it was hardly a permanent solution!