The fox caught one of my neighbour's hens.

dreamdaisy

You may recall that I posted about our having regular nightly visits from a fox who would throw up in one of the flower beds - most unpleasant. It had dug under the fence separating our garden from that of our neighbour's (who have a splendid hen house and run with two birds) so it wasn't surprising that a fox was hanging around.

Yesterday my neighbour J arrived at the gate with half-a-dozen eggs, laid on the 4th, 5th and 6th of April by her hens, as a thank-you to us for not complaining about the noise from the birds: they tend to cluck in the morning and sometimes in the early evening but it's not a nuisance, in fact it's rather comforting. She then explained that these were from her new girls, Autumn and Bluebell: in late March she and her husband had seen the fox making off across their garden with one of their original girls hanging from its mouth and the other was so traumatised by the attack the vet had to put her down two days later. He reckoned the fox was a vixen and has cubs to feed.

J has strengthened their coop defences so hopefully A and B will be around for a long time. I had all six eggs for breakfast (they were tiny) and they made a splendid omelette.

We also have another mouse (or maybe mice) in the roof space above our bedroom. DD

Sharon2960

Shortly after we moved into our current home, a hen appeared in our garden; we asked everyone in the village & no-one was missing her, so we obtained a coop, fenced off part of the garden under the apple tree so she could free range and learnt how to look after her; she was with us for 2 1/2 years before she died last November. She thanked us with a regular supply of eggs. Although there are plenty of foxes around as we live in a small village, we never had any problems - apparently because next door have several cats, and cats will always see foxes off, so I hear! The cats and our hen lived quite happily close together, the cats were allowed by the hen to use her area of the garden as a cut through to their garden!

bubbadog

We see a lot of foxes were we live, we see them very late at night and dawn trotting up and down our road as at the back of the gardens there is a huge field and a fox den. My next door neighbour who has lived in the close since the houses where first built says the den has been home to the same family for around 30yrs. I've seen a dog fox in our garden! So the foxes by us are a well known skulk (group of foxes!).

barbara12

Aww this is awful..foxes are so intelligent when it come to getting through barriers..a neighbour down the rd keeps chickens and they have lost a few...fingers crossed the fence works...

Slosh

We have chickens at the school where I work, they were hatched out from eggs at school and until ready to out did the rounds of different classes. Children collect the eggs which are used by the school kitchen. Last year one was killed and mauled by a fox, the remains were noticed and dealt with very calmly by a year 4 pupil ( together with the caretaker who was the more squeamish of the two),....he comes from a gypsy family and told us he wants to be a farmer!

Oh, and I don't work in a leafy country school but in an inner London one.

dreamdaisy

The mouse has gone: on Friday I plugged in a sonic repeller under the area where I heard the scratching and all is quiet again.

Chickens are being kept everywhere now, aren't they? Urban gardens, garden centres, schools, you name it having a chicken or two is a possibility. It's the same with bee hives, city-centre office rooftops are popular places. DD