Fox attacks are a poultry keeper's nightmare, but much can be done to make them less likely.

Fiona and Hugh Osborne's land has regular visits from foxes. Although most smallholdings are in the countryside, foxes are common in urban as well as rural landscapes so all poultry keepers need to be alert to this major predator. A fox attack is something all poultry keepers fear, but Hugh and Fiona have developed a five step process that means that even though they keep a lot of poultry, they have never lost a bird to a fox.

- Fiona and Hugh Osborne

UNDERSTANDING FOXES

Contrary to popular myths, foxes are not “psychopaths” or “land sharks”. In reality they are intelligent, social animals capable of some quite advanced thinking. Foxes have “temporal perception”, they can realise that things happen at certain times of day (e.g. chickens come out of coops). They also have been seen using basic tools (moving an object to help them bypass an obstacle like a fence for example).

Since foxes are not gratuitous killers, it begs the question as to why, if a fox gets into a coop or chicken enclosure, a fox will kill far more birds than it can eat or carry off? The reality is that we (mankind) are responsible. In a wild scenario, if a fox approached, for example, a flock of ducks roosting beside a pond, it would of course seize one. As soon as the fox emerged from cover and grabbed its prey, there would be much flapping and quacking, and the rest of the flock would take flight. In the unlikely event that a second duck didn’t fly away, the fox would see an opportunity of a second meal or of taking food back to its cubs and would grab that second duck.

It sees prey not fleeing as an opportunity for an easy meal. Unfortunately, if a fox gets into a chicken coop, because people have developed chickens to not fly (even clipping wings to enforce this) combined with the fact that the birds are confined, the foxes natural instinct to secure available food kicks in.

Understanding why foxes behave in the way that they do has helped us to plan a five-step strategy to keep our flock safe. Our strategy focuses on prevention of attack, and making our chicken enclosure inhospitable to foxes

STEP 1 - DISGUISE