Fox problem

[bdfive]

Been reading thru all these suggestions and have to comment on waxing traps. I know a long time trapper that says leave the traps as they are after catching and dispatching a predator. I can't stomach it so do hose the trap off which I'm sure doesn't remove the scent from dispatched animal. Kenny says the nastier the better. I've used the flashing night lights and had raccoons climb up and over the light trying to enter the bird pens. They did nothing for me but have to say I enjoy seeing them flashing, LOL!!! My pens are built like forts so nothing can get in. That works for me. Costly but worth it in the long run. I use 1/2 x 1" welded wire up to 2x4" non-climb horse fencing but add chicken wire over the 2x4". I also use 1x1" and 1x2" welded wire. I have a village of pens with a huge courtyard pen in the center with height of 12 feet. I can rotate letting my birds out into the courtyard putting them back into their pens before dark using healthy treats. My pens are all 8 to 10 feet high. Most are 10x30 feet. 5 aren't quite that large. All have roof and walls on end of pen for shelter. I have 10 pens in all plus the huge 12' high courtyard in the center. ALSO have a nice large predator proof house with attached run for the swans to stay in nights. They use a yard with water trough during the day with 8 foot fence. The perimeter of my bird village mentioned above has 2 to 3 feet of fencing wire attached to building or fencing laid out on ground buried so nothing can dig under to gain entrance. My birds are all safe. I can sleep nights. Does anyone know where heavier gauge chicken wire can be bought? Standard is 20 gauge but I've found 16, 17 and 18 gauge. https://www.louispage.com/wire-netting/hexagonal-gaw
Look under "Netting and Mesh".

 

[bdfive]

I've caught 2 young fox in cage trap but don't have the heart to put them down. They were both young, have never caught an older one. I released them.

 

[CMurdock]

We lost several hens to raccoons and coyotes as our 10 acres of wood is near the coop. We used electric poultry netting and haven't lost any more. We got everything from orschelns.

 

[Pounddogsrock]

There are battery powered chargers on the market, & some of them have built in solar panels. The one I use takes 4 C cells.

I never even thought of that. After I read what you said, I recall seeing them for gates, etc. I never associated them with electric fence. Always learning something new! Thanks

 

[redshoulderfox]

Every year around this time I have a few chicken come up missing to a fox. Just a few hours ago I lost my first chicken of the year to a fox. I did lock all the chickens up and will keep them locked up for now. I haven't had a fox in the coop yet and don't want it to happen. Do motion sensored lights help keep them away a night? I have to work tonight and thought about getting a few to put up in the morning if it will help. I do have 3 chicken friendly dogs that do a good job at keeping them out of the yard, but my coop is right next to the wood line. Any help would be great.

When I had quail I used nite guards which worked pretty well. it's a solar powered red light that flashes all night long. https://www.niteguard.com/ Granted my birds' facilities were pretty boarded up. Chicken wire on all sides of the run including the floor. When a bird cut it's neck open on the chicken wire and when a predator tore a head off of one of my bird's through the chicken wire I added a layer of hard ware cloth on all sides including the floor. I dug a trench around the run where both types of wire were laid in the trenches as a buried skirt. Inside the run the birds were kept in cages inside of a hutch. Proper facilities is key to protection against predators. I never lost a bird to a predator in my 6 years of raising them, other than the one through the chicken wire. Only animals that ever got in that run were mice and shrews. Also make sure it was indeed a fox. Each species has a different killing pattern which is how you can tell. It's import to know which predator it is because each species have different set of skills for breaking in to coops and different behaviors. If you know what animal it is then you can more effectively defend your flock against them.

 

[redshoulderfox]

Electric fence positioned well will stop almost all unwelcome vistiors. Another thing that works very well is to use hardware cloth for fencing material, at least for places that the predator can get to at night. A note on trapping and moving. The survival rate of relocation is almost 0. The animals are either killed because we place them in somebody elses territory (we have no way of knowing where boundry lines are) or they die in an attempt to get home. The only reason to live trap is because it makes us humans feel less guilty. In the end the animal still dies just more slowly than other much quicker methods.

I'm all for hardware cloth. Chicken wire rusts surprisingly quickly. It's also really bendy and the holes are really big. When I raise animals again I'm starting with hardware cloth and not even bothering with chickenwire. It's expensive but it's worth it in the long run. It's sturdy, has smaller holes (depending on the size you get), not very bendy, and takes awhile to rust.

 

[redshoulderfox]

I didn't read all the posts, so forgive me if I missed something.

We had a neighbor clear-cut about 5 acres of woods on the other side of the pasture that abuts our property. He displaced a lot of wildlife, including some foxes, least one of which decided that he liked my chickens. We lost two. My husband collected his urine in a spray bottle and sprayed the perimeter of our property. Not heavily, he just walked along the fenceline and every other step, he spritzed the property line. He did it the first day and then repeated it after it rained. After a week, he stopped spraying and we waited to see if we'd lose any more. We didn't. The displaced foxes found somewhere else to hunt.

Haha I'd say that's weird but then again at night I would pee around my run if I fond predator tracks near it.

 

[SabritHadid]

We keep a radio on. On a talk station, the local news, political radio "shows" are on going, NASCAR, baseball, what have you, some of the speakers get real excited, and this seems to upset the wildlife. I learned this trick from some farmers in the hill of Virginia. Mr Fox has stopped coming around. We had to run electricity out to the coop, bjt it works for a light timer, water font warmer et al. We do use "hard ware cloth' or wire cloth, whichever it s called also.

 

[mand]

I have a fox den and badger sett 15 meters from my coop! I just feed them! Left overs, dog biscuits etc. So far, in three years have never had a kill.....Fox knows where they are but does not even come in the garden since I feed him every day!

 

[FarmerTony]

I don't have a fox problem, because they don't live in my woods. My issue is with raccoons and rando coyote's. The packs avoid my livestock. The coon's cant help themselves, but they are a threat nonetheless. So what I did was start setting live traps and putting in whatever they were getting into. Cat food seems to work well, but I have cats so I use eggs. Cats don't go for the eggs more than once because they get caught and released. Coons don't go for eggs more than once because they get caught, shot and thrown out in the road for the buzzards to eat and the rest of the coons to see. But coons are dumb ****s, give it 6 months and they forget and some retarded coon comes up on my property, and then they stay away as long as the smell is too much for them. The coyotes are smarter, Only one of them ever got caught, and shot, and strung up in a tree to rot for all to see. Not rhyming intentionally mind you, it just seems to be working out that way. If that all fails I have a sociopathic were-demon that likes to kill and makes human territorial vocalizations to lure in its prey. All the native bee species seem to like me though.

But I mean hey that's just what works for me.