We have a fox family in our garden

[ForCluckSake]

We've got chickens so we quite often get a visit from the fox. The chickens are in a super secure fox proof location so am not worried about them. I have started leaving a few extra eggs on the lawn and tonight instead of 1 fox there was 3

We have three that visit our garden too, recently moved to a house right on the edge of a big city and have a field next door. They pass through and eat spilled bird seed/suet. Only seen one in person once, we have a camera though and they come every night.

Even more exciting, the camera has revealed a regular badger visiting and once we had three out there at the same time. They really like peanuts. If there aren't any spilled peanuts from the bird feeders they dig holes in my lawn instead though.

Camera also shows we have a lot of different cats, a mouse, very occasionally a rat, two squirrels and a really fat hedgehog 😁

The fox sniffed at the hedgehog one evening right in front of the camera and the hedgehog sort of inflated itself and hissed and scared the fox off. I love having them in the garden.

Yes they do dig stuff up occasionally but I am pretty sure they lived here before the house was built so it's not their fault 😍

Run isn't electric fencing but has thick steel fencing panels on a concrete floor and a wire enforced coop.

This summer we've had a fox family, 2 adults and 4 babies, it's been lovely to watch them play.

We had a beautiful family of foxes every year at my last house but the dog hated them- they are clever creatures and knew the dog doing his nut was the other side of glass, they would sit on the deck the other side of the patio doors and taunt him! Meanwhile my dog (when in the garden) would jump over fences to protect the neighbours chickens from the foxes, my neighbour called out to me once and told me about his nocturnal visits (hence him being confined to the house!)

Country fixes are very different to city foxes. They're not hungry here they make a ducking mess, screech and wail when they're shagging, pull all the recycling out, go through the bins, generally pains in the arse.

@ForCluckSake
😭NDN have two huge/high pear trees and i watch the squirrels going right to the top branches to get the ripest ones, they are cheeky but also very smart !
I have put grapes out in their basket though and they don’t seem interested so maybe not that smart

@Techno56
That’s lovely
My cousin has a night camera too and has badgers in the garden, she lives next to woodland

Aww!! I’ve just been feeding ‘mine’ out of the flat window- he’s so good, he just comes when I call at about 11 or so. He’s had a sausage and half a packet of ham, and I’ve left him some water under a hedge because I think he’ll appreciate a drink today. He’s called Mr Pointy Face

With sausages and ham I imagine he’s sat in wait !

@BeaucoupFish he doesn’t always get such treats but I am a soft touch- the sausage was off my dinner and I found a reduced packet of ham in Tesco 😂 I always have a little something for him. I think foxes have a hard time around here.

Yes they do, they’re always very underweight, it’s sad to see any animal suffering

Forclucksake good luck with a poo bag when they spray diarrhoea all over your lawn every night.

On YouTube there is a video of a fox who came and sat with a man drinking a pint outside.Its really cute.

Foxes are beautiful, I really don't dislike them.

But I think we should keep our distance from them, for health reasons, and also not feed them, in case it interferes with their hunting skills. If anyone wants to explain why I'm wrong, I'd be happy to hear it, but otherwise I probably wouldn't be feeding them.

@valadon68 absolutely with country foxes I think it might interfere. Urban is a bit more tricky. But it’s actually been studied that they don’t come to rely on a food source and it wouldn’t interfere with their natural foraging. It’s hard for them here as the food sources for them would have been really affected by things like lockdown where there’s been hardly any scraps around. Wildlife charities don’t counsel against feeding them at all, and say ideally feed them responsibly,
but do remind people not to hand feed or get too close, obviously. And not to leave out excessive scraps if you want to avoid attracting vermin. No chance of that here as anything I give to Mr Fox is gone as it hits the ground.

I love them. We have chickens too but the coop is very secure. In over a year we've had nothing happen, though DD has seen a fox standing looking in at the chickens (who were quite indignant about it).

They do poo in the garden, which I don't much appreciate, but they're just animals doing what they're supposed to do. Obviously they're not going to understand human concepts of ownership or tidiness. If I'm going to live in the countryside, I think it's my responsibility to work around the wildlife, not vice versa.

Beautiful

i do love foxes but also dont agree with feeding them but i guess you can't resist if they have cubs.

Lots of people feed the birds. Is it so different?

My DD has a fox den in her garden in London. She hates them so much that she is moving flats soon. They have ruined the garden, they spread garbage all over
the place and they scream all night keeping them awake. I like seeing them roam past my country garden but I wouldn't be trying to attract them in

Oh wow, this is by far the best thread I've seen today! I adore foxes 🦊

The one that visits me now is the black-eared one, grown up.

Urban foxes are vermin.

They trash everything in sight, they shit everywhere, they cause untold damage, and a lot of the fault for that lies with the people who think they’re cute and feed them.

And there have been cases in the news of foxes entering people’s houses and in one instance attacking sleeping twins in their cots.

They spread disease and filth where they go, and although they’re cute people really shouldn’t be feeding and encouraging them.

if you stop then they will make a nuisance of themselves around the neighbourhood.

This is the one in our back garden earlier this year….its the same one that visited during covid when it was a cub

Dh hates them, but thats mainly because he is worried about our pet

Foxes are not classified as vermin, actually.