Neighbour cultivating fox den

[Sunnyday14558]

Our neighbour has actively been getting foxes to nest in her garden. We live on the outskirts of a city so I’m not entirely sure why she’s luring them into a semi detached property from woodland half a mile away. Anyhow, we now have a family living in her garden and the noise at night is keeping us awake. We have two children under 4 and have found a dead rat in their play area and fox poo all over the lawn. The patio also stinks from fox wee so we can’t open our windows downstairs. I literally have no idea what to do as we’ve tried fox deterrents before and nothing seems to work. I want to confront her about it but I’m pretty sure she’ll accuse me of being mean to the foxes. A someone please give me some thoughts on how to approach this? Is encouraging foxes to live in an urban garden really kind for them? I ask because it sounds like they’re ripping each other apart at night with the fighting.

We have foxes living in our garden. They come and go as they please without me encouraging them. It is lovely when they bring their cubs out. And I have seen them eating rats too.

What is the neighbour doing to actively encourage them?

Sorry, those saying foxes do not attack pets, they do. My own cat was cornered by two foxes, late night security guard chased them away, thankfully. And I've seen a fox twice on my evening walks try and get a cat off a fence.

Wildlife, I've seen them chase squirrels for dinner but the squirrel got away. I've also seen one try to get inot the hedgehog box we had in the garden where a little hedgehog ran to. I ended up having to stay up about 3hrs, chasing the persistent fox with a hose, before it finally gave up on the hope of an easy meal.

Anyone who thinks foxes do not attack are daft imo. They need to eat.

@Crwysmam Badgers will decimate a lawn looking for bugs. Worse than just about anything else. Deer are destroying the beach woods here and they are far too numerous. 2 types and they just breed like rabbits. We have an issue with too many red kites - other birds hate them near their nests.

Foxes have colonized cities. They should not be there in such numbers. They really should not be encouraged and, like cats, you will never keep them out. Some London foxes are huge. There’s still plenty of room in the countryside for a healthy population of foxes.

They do but unfortunately the ones we have found are half chewed and left in our kids play area 😔

Foxes aren't classed as vermin actually, and the they have a low risk of transmitting disease to humans.

Goodness knows how anyone can think they have foxes in their garden with no smell. Foxes scent mark everywhere and it stinks. We have foxes around, which is fine, they might get rid of some of the rabbits, but we can certainly smell them. And they don't often venture into the garden, because of the dogs.

I appreciate this isn't pleasant, but if the rats were not dead in the kids' play area, they'd be running around it alive, during the night, urinating and potentially leaving behind leptospirosis. Whatever is killing these rats is doing you a favour.

Also, half-chewed rats are more in the wheelhouse of cats than foxes. Foxes eat or bury their kills. Cats don't. Are you sure it's not a neighbourhood cat doing this?

What a load of neurotic nonsense🤣

We had a vixen raise a family of seven cubs under our shed, so they were around from February to late July, and you couldn’t smell anything in the garden at all.

When we took down the old shed two years later, the den was exposed, and that had no smell either.

Urban fox hunting. On Lambrettas.
That's what we need!

Just get one of the gadgets from the garden centre that emits a high pitch sound that they don't like, they'll soon find a new home.

When I got hens all advice about deterring foxes was deploying male wee around the boundary.

I obviously couldn’t do it and men were surprisingly reticent so relied on my brother’s occasional visits.

if only foxes knew to be scared of women!!

Oh come off it. We have no natural landscape left in the UK. Virtually everything you look at is man made, even our national parks are almost entirely manmade landscapes. Hardly any ancient woodland left, heathland down to the last few percent. Wetlands almost all gone.

Just going by the amount of land that has a building or road on it and pretending that everything else is suitable habitat for wildlife is grossly disingenuous. We are one of the most wildlife depleted countries in the world.

They are not vermin, we are. They live in territories, have natural population control, we willy nilly take up land wherever we can for him use. We don't give a rats arse about who is affected.

I love your neighbour for her thoughtfulness, @Sunnyday14558 but her actions are misplaced. She needs to work with the wildlife trust so it's properly managed and not impacyful on the foxes or any other animal including humans.

Ref the smell buy some fabulous artifical grass cleaner and use that to disinfect it all.

All of the people on here saying foxes are awful because they kill other animals - rabbits, chickens, mice etc - well for one they are a predator species, that’s what they do and it’s the way that nature keeps a balance, and it’s why mice and rats reproduce so prolifically. Foxes eat a lot of mice and rats thereby keeping those populations under control (well they would if humans weren’t so crap at disposing of their own filth, and didn’t leave food and rubbish on the streets).

But secondly what about cats? They also kill other animals, often birds and frogs. They crap in the flower beds. Their poo carries toxoplasmosis. I have had much more trouble in my garden from cats than I ever have from the foxes that wander in. My kids saw a neighbour’s cat pouncing on the poor fledgling blue tits we’d had nesting in the garden.

So why are posters on here calling foxes ‘vermin’, advocating putting poison in food, but not saying the same about cats?

Totally agree about cats, murdering bastards.
My neighbour also feeds the foxes and I like it because i'm nature deprived (London)

Ghastly creatures, they took 13 of my chickens one night and left the corpses in the garden. Children went out to play the next morning and found the callous destruction.

Anybody feeding them is quite frankly stupid.

We had a problem with foxes digging up out garden so purchased an electric cattle style fence- it was about 15 years ago so dont remember how much it was but it wasnt expensive ? £40 ?
maybe .Anyway it was highly effective! Kept it for two years and they never returned ! You do have to remember to disconnect it if the kids are in The garden ...

She’s doing a good thing, Keep YOUR dog under control and out of HER garden . YOU are the selfish one here

You should have made sure your garden was secure, it’s not acceptable to allow your dog to leave your property without a lead.

But I do agree we shouldn’t be feeding foxes as it can create other problems (make them not fearful of humans, unbalance the population) and there should be enough small mammals for them to eat.

I love seeing foxes in my garden. Yes they can smell and be noisy, but let’s be honest it’s not as bad as some of my neighbours.

Pigeon poo is highly toxic, especially when dry as it can be inhaled.

There are some pest control companies who are allowed to removed pigeons and their nests from peoples homes. This is because they are a danger to health.

Technically, we are living on the homes the foxes once had.
The noises you hear are probably the cubs playing, they are developing essential skills.
Mating happens in winter which can be noisy.
They will most likely come back year after year.
Your neighbour will not take advice from you, but while its important to leave out fresh water, is it not advised to feed foxes every day. They need to remain independent and fearful of humans in order to survive. Just a few comments here will make it clear how much some people hate them.
Occasional supplementary feeding is fine, and helpful in extreme weather conditions, or if you need to build some trust if you intend to medicate a fox (for mange, which many people do, which is why so many town foxes look so amazing).
As someone else mentioned, foxes also usually avoid cats.
There is a large fox den at the top of my garden and they and my cats have worked out the lines of who goes where. The most annoying thing the foxes do are steal my shoes. I love seeing and hearing them.

How amazing she’s looking after the wildlife in HER garden, despite having idiots letting their dogs loose. You should be grateful she told you and very apologetic!