Re:Fox behavior
This post is intended for those who are making preemptive efforts to reduce the population of this chicken eating vermin. Here in Central Missouri the foxes started breeding during the last wk. of January. We could hear their vigorous yipping, over the coop baby monitor, out in the woods. The only good thing about the snow is that it makes it very easy to track them. This evening I followed the tracks into a half-acre of cedars (usually a nesting area for wild turkeys). Sure enough, I found one of their food caches. Red Fox will stash their killed prey and come back for it later. If you arrive home and find only feathers (several chickens/ducks/etc.) and know you have foxes in the neighborhood, it is almost a certainty your dead flock isn't too far away and can be tracked down (at least retire the fox from the target pool).
I'm posting five shots: The first was taken 08/06. Our neighbor had let her thirteen Silver Laced Wyandotte pullets out on the lawn for the first time, and had gone inside to get them some treats. Approx. fifteen minutes later she walked out to discover nothing but a very few feathers and a fox taking off into the woods. She called us up and I went looking the following afternoon. Those `bright' patches under the cedar are the remains of seven of the pullets. Two days later I found the other six piles of feathers about 50yds away under another cedar. The SLW's were rubbed out by a pair of foxes (we found the den and that was that).
The second set of shots are from this afternoon. The ground is frozen and the fox stashed the rabbit and attempted to bury it (snack later).
What I find interesting is that the raccoon population crashed last year (only trapped/shot 8 - usually - over a ten yr. period the avg. is ~30). The raccoons normally start mating in the middle of January, but we've yet to hear any `yowling' at all. The fox population has skyrocketed (between our neighbors and I last summer/early fall harvested 18).
Well, the sets are out again.
For more trapping info see this link : http://backyardchickens.yuku.com/topic/3887/t/prepping-and-using-steel-traps-a-tutorial.html
Around here all free ranging is conducted under armed supervision. If our preds are expecting chicken, they'll have to wait until I bring `em a bucket from KFC.
(ed: corrected date)
This post is intended for those who are making preemptive efforts to reduce the population of this chicken eating vermin. Here in Central Missouri the foxes started breeding during the last wk. of January. We could hear their vigorous yipping, over the coop baby monitor, out in the woods. The only good thing about the snow is that it makes it very easy to track them. This evening I followed the tracks into a half-acre of cedars (usually a nesting area for wild turkeys). Sure enough, I found one of their food caches. Red Fox will stash their killed prey and come back for it later. If you arrive home and find only feathers (several chickens/ducks/etc.) and know you have foxes in the neighborhood, it is almost a certainty your dead flock isn't too far away and can be tracked down (at least retire the fox from the target pool).
I'm posting five shots: The first was taken 08/06. Our neighbor had let her thirteen Silver Laced Wyandotte pullets out on the lawn for the first time, and had gone inside to get them some treats. Approx. fifteen minutes later she walked out to discover nothing but a very few feathers and a fox taking off into the woods. She called us up and I went looking the following afternoon. Those `bright' patches under the cedar are the remains of seven of the pullets. Two days later I found the other six piles of feathers about 50yds away under another cedar. The SLW's were rubbed out by a pair of foxes (we found the den and that was that).
The second set of shots are from this afternoon. The ground is frozen and the fox stashed the rabbit and attempted to bury it (snack later).
What I find interesting is that the raccoon population crashed last year (only trapped/shot 8 - usually - over a ten yr. period the avg. is ~30). The raccoons normally start mating in the middle of January, but we've yet to hear any `yowling' at all. The fox population has skyrocketed (between our neighbors and I last summer/early fall harvested 18).
Well, the sets are out again.
For more trapping info see this link : http://backyardchickens.yuku.com/topic/3887/t/prepping-and-using-steel-traps-a-tutorial.html
Around here all free ranging is conducted under armed supervision. If our preds are expecting chicken, they'll have to wait until I bring `em a bucket from KFC.
(ed: corrected date)
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