Foxes in broad daylight, 1st predator loss..

[Sevenup]

I've had my chickens in a house w/coop and have let them out in the yard every day around early afternoon until hey come in at dark and I lock them up. They've had this schedule since Janurary when they started laying (before that they were always fenced in). I've not lost one to a predator until yesterday at 11 am my daughter was out on the deck and saw a big red fox and two small ones (a mama and 2 babies?) come in and grab 3 hens and take off very quickly. We chased them to see where they were going (hard because of fence lines and such) and they dropped one now dead chicken in the chase. Well, in our round up of the chickens to get them back in the fence an hour later, a fox came back and grabbed another one and took off with it. So now we've lost 4 hens in one day! (we were rounding up the 16 other chickens who must like to be chased because they won't come when you call them!).

Is this normal fox behavior for a fox to come up for the dinner buffet in broad daylight?

 

[Sevenup]

Half an hour after I wrote this my girls started clucking that noise they make when somethings wrong, I ran out and a fox was sniffing the fence of the coop.. at 11:45 in the morning.. It ran off very quickly.

 

[klf73]

I am not familiar with "normal" fox behavior but I lost my best hens last year to one in the broad daylight. He was only 15 feet from my house and in my driveway running around. Ours look terrible though and we thought he was rabid, he just didn't look right. He even went right into a pen that housed a gorgeous lav ameraucana hen that was only10 feet from my back door and was in there a while cuz most of her feather were still in the pen

. My dh finally took care of him but we had lost too many hens for my liking. Hopefully someone with more knowledge comes along to help...