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AIBU?

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Original poster

To leave some food out for the fox in our garden.

407 replies

MrsMotherHen · 25/02/2018 15:23

We have a fox that frequents our garden last few occasions hes been out in the day and DH has just seen him sunbathing on the patio. We are not rural but live about 50m away from the beach front along a promenade with a park quite close.

To leave some food out for the fox in our garden.
OP posts:
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5
specialsubject · 25/02/2018 15:39

Urban vermin. Feed and it will multiply.

retirednow · 25/02/2018 15:40

He looks really healthy, I feed ours, up to you though.

Fiestylittleowl · 25/02/2018 15:43

I’d feed him :) no different to feeding the birds, hedgehogs etc.
Don’t know why everyone calls them vermin. They are beautiful creatures and have as much right to be here as we do. I would love to have them in my garden.

chinnyrekkon · 25/02/2018 15:44

Wasn't there a child attacked only a few weeks ago by a fox?

ChaosNeverRains · 25/02/2018 15:44

They’re vermin. If you feed them then it encourages them towards humans when they are essentially wild animals. If you have neighbours who have chickens rabbits or guinea pigs they will kill those for fun A fox will kill ten chickens and only eat one just because they can.

A fox won’t necessarily be looking to attack your children but the reality is that many foxes are brazen so will get close enough to children and adults for them to think that they’re tame and they in turn may end up getting bitten.

Plus they won’t eat all of the food you put out, and any left will attract rats.

Foxes can be beautiful animals but while I don’t wish them harm they are wild animals and should remain as such.

MsHarry · 25/02/2018 15:45

DON'T DO IT!! We sometimes get foxes but don't encourage them. Mu neighbour however, does. Then she gets annoyed when our dog sniffs the food and breaks into her garden! Confused

DullAndOld · 25/02/2018 15:46

" I would love to have them in my garden. "

I wouldn't, their shit is quite noxious. worse than dog shit.
Once my children were playing in a sandpit when I realised their hands were covered in fox shit...
totally disgusting.

HolyMountain · 25/02/2018 15:47

Foxes are beautiful creatures to look at ; in the wild where they belong . Not sunbathing on patios and being chucked leftovers by well meaning humans.

safariboot · 25/02/2018 15:49

YWBU. Attracting animals that are likely to pee, poo, dig, and make a racket in your neighbours' gardens.

cariadlet · 25/02/2018 15:50

We used to feed a fox and felt very sad when it stopped coming round (presumably it had been run over). Neither of the neighbours minded even though one of them has a few chickens.

We'd hoped that it would scare off some of the bloody local cats that like to use the garden as a cat litter, but unfortunately they weren't bothered by him. He did manage to get rid of our rat problem though.

HundredMilesAnHour · 25/02/2018 15:51

There is some appalling ignorance on this thread. Foxes aren't vermin nor do they "kill for fun" nor will they "bring all their friends".

Educate yourselves a little:

foxproject.org.uk/fox-facts/

Original poster
MrsMotherHen · 25/02/2018 15:52

@HolyMountain I havent fed him at all there is no food out there at all. He just likes to frequent our garden.

Good job we decided against chickens isnt it Confused

OP posts:
HarrietKettle · 25/02/2018 15:53

Oh my god. So many misconceptions I don't know where to start.

  1. foxes have no classification as vermin. They don't. Check your council website.

  2. they do not kill 'for fun'. Why on earth would they do that? Their survivial depends on finding prey TO EAT, not because they get a kick out of it. They often kill all the chickens in the coop and take one because they think they can come back for the rest. They'll have a larder and they'll 'store' their kill in it for a period of time. Or they take it to vixen who can't leave the cubs to go and get food. A fox can't carry ten chickens at once. Obviously. But by the time it gets back to the kill it's often been discovered.

  3. you can and have been able to for quite some time acquire fox-proof lodging for pets and chickens.

  4. they do not carry any diseases dangerous to humans, their shit is not nice obviously but no more dangerous than dog-shit.

  5. I really believe those hysterical DM tales of foxes attaching babies are either fake news or cover-ups for the family dog turning (which is far more common and likely than a fox attack)

  6. you know we're on their territory right? That we've pushed so far and built into the country side they have had no choice but to try and adapt as best they can. And they're pretty good at it, because humans leave waste everywhere.

Seniorcitizen1 · 25/02/2018 15:54

Kettle - foxes kill for the fun of it.I have seen numerous chicken coups where a fox has got in and killed every chicken and NOME taken away for food. They are vermin and should be treated as such

FoxesResting · 25/02/2018 15:55

I'd feed it, but I'm the sort of person who would love to encourage foxes Smile

Graphista · 25/02/2018 15:55

All the reasons already mentioned plus you wouldn't be doing the fox any favours making them reliant on you as a food source or even starting to think humans are trustworthy. Lots of humans are appalling to foxes tame enough to get close.

cariadlet · 25/02/2018 15:55

If you have neighbours who have chickens rabbits or guinea pigs they will kill those for fun A fox will kill ten chickens and only eat one just because they can.

Rubbish! A fox doesn't kill for fun any more than any other animal. In the wild they'd only be able to kill one chicken as the others would fly away.
The others can't fly away if they are in a hen coop. So the fox's natural behaviour is to kill them all and take them away one at a time, bury them so that they have a cache of food.
They tend to be disturbed and end up leaving dead animals that they can't eat on the spot or take away.

Humans don't visit the supermarket, take away enough food for one meal and then return a few hours later to buy food for the next meal. If enough food is available to keep us going for a little while then we buy more. Foxes are basically must doing the same thing if they are offered the (unnatural) opportunity of killing more than one animal at a time.

HarrietKettle · 25/02/2018 15:56

No, they do not kill for fun. If none were taken the fox was likely disturbed and would have been back soon enough.

ChaosNeverRains · 25/02/2018 15:56

What people also need to consider is that one of the reasons foxes have become urbanised is because of the amount of human food now available to to them. Some of this is obviously from general human waste but other is from humans who believe that they are well-meaning who feed them.

The problems then arise however because the foxes lose the ability to hunt for themselves - especially the young, - and then when their convenient food source moves away or has a baby and decides the fox isn’t that good an idea in their garden after all, their food source dries up and they no longer possess the ability to hunt well and as such you end up with foxes who are over brazen because they’ve been brought up to not fear humans, but also unable to fend for themselves and as such end up in a shocking state of mal nutrition.

People who feed wild animals generally do so for their own selfish gain i.e. because they love to see the fox etc but don’t think of what they’re actually contributing to by doing so.

ineedwine99 · 25/02/2018 15:56

I’d feed, i’m rural and yes i put a bit of bird seed out for the visiting rat, he’s fun to watch and as long as he’s outside i don’t mind him being there.

thewhitechapelfatberg · 25/02/2018 15:58

I had an urban fox visiting our garden last year - I fed him for a while because he was so mangey and I felt really sorry for him. But really I agree with previous posters about not encouraging them. They dig, they crap everywhere, they destroy or steal any human possessions left out overnight, they have a pungent foxy smell and they make a lot of unsociable noise.
Regardless of whether they’re dangerous to other pets (probably) or to children (probably not), they’re not great garden companions.

MyKingdomForACaramel · 25/02/2018 15:59

I used to have a beautiful fox in my garden - he likes to sunbathe on top of my shed! I fed him occasionally, and didn’t have any issues at all (well you do get the poo but we had that whether I fed him or not)

UpstartCrow · 25/02/2018 15:59

Foxes don't kill for the fun of it. They kill everything they can reach. Then they carry it all off and cache it.
On farms they don't have time to carry away all they kill, we tend to hear them and go out to scare them off or shoot them.

MichaelBendfaster · 25/02/2018 15:59

no, because they get enough food from people's bins and empty market streets where the rubbish has been left after the market.

This. Urban foxes do pretty well, which is why they're there!

We have foxes in our garden. Never fed them but they still keep coming back.

NewYearNewMe18 · 25/02/2018 15:59

I'd check your council website. Feeding foxes here would get you an anti social behaviour order ASBO (seriously)