Is there a way to deter foxes?

[Golden Brahma 64]

I have one chicken and when I'm at home, I like to let her roam the garden. I often work from home and I have my headphones on, so can't really hear anything going on around me. I haven't really worried up until the last few days because we don't generally have many foxes where I live, especially not during the day, but there's clearly a new fox on the block!

The other day, I was working with my headphones on (I need them on for my work), and my husband ran outside because he could hear the chicken making a lot of noise. There was a fox up the other end of the garden.

Often, if I'm just popping out for 5 minutes to do the school run or whatever, I'll leave her in the garden hoping she'll be fine. Luckily I didn't do that this morning when I did the school run because when I came home, there was a fox in the garden.

I don't know what it is with my garden, but it's a bit of a hotspot for every cat in the neighbourhood. I have 3 of my own, and we have a few others that are often in my garden as well so I thought maybe that stopped the foxes coming in.

I just had the chicken running around the garden now while I'm inside working and I noticed she looked very alert, and I could see the fox through the fence in my neighbour's garden. So any advice on how I can deter them, or is there nothing I can do really? Also, do chickens have a good sense of smell or of foxes? We've had a number of chickens, this will be our last one, and sometimes they start making their clucking noises really loudly, I'll go outside to see what's going on and they'll be a fox in my neighbour's garden but there's a wall there so there's no way the chicken could see it.

Human hair clippings/ dog poop/ dog hair and tiger poop

 

[Phoebus]

Wonder if hair from a dog groomer would work? You could distribute it all around the perimeter of your garden.

 

[B&B FarmsSc]

GB64...wouldnt recommend that tactic.....might be a "lil ole fox" lol but i guarantee......I wouldnt recommend that one

 

[B&B FarmsSc]

Phoebus has the right idea....head to the local pet smart, supply plus, sense, and grab up their bags full of cuts....they throw them away anyway....free bags full of deterrent

 

[susan1981]

Thanks everyone. I'll go to my brother's house. He has four dogs! Sure they have plenty of fur going spare. I've been letting her run around in the garden and I've sectioned it in half so she runs down the end of the garden that's closest to the house. We have quite a long garden. But I've also been putting the radio on a talk radio station, and leaving it on in the middle of the garden. Haven't seen the fox since. That's not to say he's not been around, but so far so good. So maybe it does work? I don't know. I'm still mega paranoid about it though!

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I could never kill a fox. I really don't like them, they've had enough of my animals over the time, but I couldn't kill one.... I wondered if leaving a radio on in the garden while I'm inside might deter them?.....

In over 50 years of chicken keeping the only thing that I have found that will deter a fox from killing your chickens is to kill the fox or at least reduce the chicken killing fox's body temperature to background or room temperature. Sorry.

pretty sure coyote or wolf urine would scare them off....

Fur trappers employ animal urine and gland scents to ATTRACT predators, or at least to remove the predators suspicion that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" when the fur barer approaches the trap.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

... The foxes here behave like your coyotes. Hope you can a kill shot on a few. I don't know if there is any truth to this but I have heard if you shoot one and let it lay the other coyotes will avoid the area....

I doubt that a coyote would hesitate for a minute to feed on a dead coyote if your chickens suddenly became unavailable

 

[itsasmallfarm]

Fur trappers employ animal urine and gland scents to ATTRACT predators, or at least to remove the predators suspicion that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" when the fur barer approaches the trap.

yes that is true but coyote urine would scare off foxes to my knowledge while attracting coyotes.

 

[centrarchid]

Thanks everyone. I'll go to my brother's house. He has four dogs! Sure they have plenty of fur going spare. I've been letting her run around in the garden and I've sectioned it in half so she runs down the end of the garden that's closest to the house. We have quite a long garden. But I've also been putting the radio on a talk radio station, and leaving it on in the middle of the garden. Haven't seen the fox since. That's not to say he's not been around, but so far so good. So maybe it does work? I don't know. I'm still mega paranoid about it though!

The dog or human hair / urine will not repel Red Fox. Red Fox you might be able to repel with Coyote urine / hair but that is not likely a practical option. Most Red Foxes can be repelled with properly setup electrified fencing although some individuals can figure out how to defeat even that. I have dogs that can and have killed Red Foxes, yet even they can have trouble keeping foxes away if area fox to be excluded from is too large.

A few years back I had a really sneaky fox that could defeat both my perimeter electrified wire and electrified poultry netting. I beat him for a while by also having a single strand of electrified wire offset by about a foot from the poultry netting which where fox would plant himself to jump over. Dogs eventually caught him making test relatively short lived.

 

[susan1981]

I live in the UK. We don't have coyotes or wolves here, well certainly not where I live anyway. The only real predator where I live would be a fox. I live in a town as well. So not countryside, so we don't get many wild animals. I'd say we don't get any apart from foxes and the odd stray cat (although they're scared of the chicken and I wouldn't call them 'wild'). I wouldn't even know how to kill a fox, let alone actually be able to do it. I also heard lion dung is a good deterrent, but where I'd get that from, god knows. The only lions we have here are in zoos!