counsel me, we may get rid of our hens

[ska]

i haven't been here much recently as we've been so busy with our new house but we have had our flock devastated 4 times since we moved here and may get rid of the remaining 2 hens. We have kept hens for 9 years now and love them so much but where we have moved to has very active foxes day and night and even came into the garden while 3 of us were with the hens and took one. Luckily my dd shouted and cursed at it and it dropped her. Now they have to be shut in all day long and it makes me so mad, doesn't seem worth keeping them as prisoners. what shall we do??

Whilst not exactly what you want, the only answer will be a permanent run. Could you construct a big enough one you wouldn't feel guilty about shutting them in?

ohh, and just remembered, you can get electronic fox deterrent thing (try googling) may be worth a try before you give up completely?

ska, have you got space to make a permanent run? It's certainly the only option in our area, because of the foxes. But they can have lovely runs - they don't need to be prisoners! I want to build one for our hens, who atm are in an all in one house/run, but I want to build an all in one walk in run, so they have a bit more height, and a bit more space.

If bird flu ever hits your area you'd need them under cover anyway, so it might not be a disaster.

Or you could get a llama! I understand they are VERY effective at keeping the foxes away!

we have a permenant run attached to the hen house (we have a flytes of fancy' 'maggies henhouse/12 hens' but imo it is far too small for even the 2 we have left to live in permenantly. To do that we'd have to move it every few days and that is simply not practical for us. We previously used tolet them have the run of the back third of our huge garden (250 ' long) and tehy were very happy. Until the fox...

Could you afford to have a large aviary made - then put the henhouse and the hens in it.

maybe - we have thought of this. we have to work out how to keep the fox out - he digs and he crawls and he jumps!

There's a website called aviaries4u or similar and his stuff looks really good and fox proof.