Fecking fox

[duchesse]

Four disappeared, one outright dead, one rescued relatively uninjured from the jaws of a fecking fox but died later in the fire basket. I was out there in wellies and pyjamas at 5:45 am chasing the fucker.

Why won't it take any cockerels? Got too many of these...

They were beautiful Lavender Araucanas. snif Laid blue eggs they did.

How horrible! It wouldn't be so bad if the blooming fox was hungry rather than greedy.

what about an electric fence? that you switch on when dark, maybe on a timer switch?

Sorry about your Araucana's. Lovely looking birds as well as beautiful eggs.

I had a tug-of-war with the fox and one of my hens last year - he got away with its head. 4pm in the bloody afternoon too. We lost so many birds last year that ours are now confined to a large pen and only allowed out if DH or I are present for the duration.

Have the others turned up?

nope.

I plucked and gutted the one I wrestled from the fox. I think it died from a massive heart attack- there was a big blood clot around its heart. I guess that at a fox's uvula is quite a scary experience even for a bird brain.

I lost two RI Whites on Friday morning (hatched and reared them myself as well.)

it's so sad, we have a fox and i'm worried about my rabbits

Bl**dy fox got our rabbit! Again wasn't hungry just decapitated him, and left him in the garden. Had to check the garden for his head in case the boys would find it. Told the boys the rabbit died in his sleep, and that they couldn't see him.
hate the fox!!

was your rabbit in a cage deegward

duchesse - we've had lost chickens turn up outside the backdoor next morning, not often, but a pleasant surprise when it happens.

It sounds like this fox is going to keep coming back until they've all gone. Which is what we had last year. We ended up having a poultry-free 2 months and when we did re-stock we reinforced the hen-house & run fences. So far, so good.

I too have discovered "lost" chickens after a day or so that have escaped just leaving the B**d with a few feathers. Best discovery was "Chicken George" found hiding, traumatised in the long grass. OK, so he was a cockerel, but was DS2's favourite, having hatched him and carried him around like a parrot.

A tip from an old-boy farmer friend was to have all the males of the household take a nightly pee around the henhouse. Great fun for the littlies! (Maybe not so much fun for the hens)

We just went out there because we heard a commotion, and I knew that one Silkie had refused to go in to roost and hadn't been able to reach her right under the coop.

She was squawking and we could only think that she too was being attacked by the bastard fox. We found her sitting on the ground trembling some distance away from the coop, and right next to the coop, also trembling and looking as shocked as it could was...a hedgehog. Evidently on the snuffle for leftover pellets and stray eggs. First time I'd seen a live one at such close quarters. Chicken was fine, and is not safely tucked up in coop.

ps; no sign of lost ones

pps: chicken is now safely tucked up...

Hope DH had a pee while he was out there!

arf at them trembling at each other!