I have small animal mesh up to a metre and a half, with heavy chain link horizontal for two feet on the ground and wired to the small animal mesh to stop any digging in. Then everything roofed over with plastic bird mesh on polypipe hoops. No fox could get a purchase on it.
If you want your chickens to be able to range during the day it is possible to create a ladder on each side to an entrance/exit at high level. Ladders with smooth metal tubular rungs well spaced will deter any fox but enable the chickens to travel.
I agree with Alan, you also need to fence / screen the top. I used 2 x 8 wood to hold up the mesh. I have to deal with hawks, fishers, coyotes, raccoons, foxes, owls, and the occasional bear. Also mesh under the soil will prevent predators from digging a hole under the fence. I also installed an inexpensive wyze cam to monitor from anywhere. Saves me having to go outside and look.
Interestingly, Indian flour is on sale here in Western Australia, a State that produces millions of tonnes of wheat (hence the wheat belt East and North of Perth)
I’ve had the same problem with foxes. They would dig under the hen house to get to the chickens. I ended up digging a trench around the house and pen about 6 inches deep and 1 foot wide, laid chicken wire down in the trench and attaching it with steel tywire to the bottom of the pen perimeter and covering the laid chicken wire back up with the dirt.
By the way, my biggest problem with predators by far is from raccoons. They are little terrorists.
Although I don’t have problems with foxes I have lost several flocks of chooks and ducks to local dogs. I now have a high fence with a chain mesh roof. It took some doing to construct but worth the time and expense. Haven’t lost a chook in years, and they are free ranged for several hours each evening before putting themselves to bed on nightfall. The base of the fence and gate is cemented to prevent dogs digging underneath, another expense but worth every penny. I used a chain mesh as it is way stronger than the light chicken mesh and lasts for many years, mine is over 20 years old how and has a few more year in it, although it does look its age.
Find their den. This time of yr they’re very secretive If you can find the den you will disrupt them and they may just move on.
Consider that the changes in climate w effect them too.
Get guineas, haven’t lost one since addition of guineas. More effective than my peacocks. They are alert 24/7. We rebuilt barrier fencing in concrete filled trench too, deters digging under by any predators.
Cap, constantly moving your site is not going to help stop attacks, they will just attack the new site. You should be using something like Cloudfare to protect against DOS attacks.
Cap, did you see the Foxes? Because we lost a whole coop full of Chickens to Racoons and they were all beheaded. They didn’t even EAT them! They just tore off their little heads and the rooster who tried to defend them was torn up horribly and killed. One of the Saddest days of my life. They were not just egg layers, they were my babies, raised from tiny chicks. I’m so sorry for your loss!!! Mandy in Michigan, USA.
Hey Mandy,
Yes, I saw them at it. I ran out with the dog and saw two foxes scale the fence and scarper. It is sad and disappointing, for many reasons. And it’s the second time it’s happened this year already! The first time the foxes dug in — so I sorted that; now they’re scaling the fence. I need to get mean, me thinks.
The critter that broke into your chicken house was a raccoon and very likely a family group. Raccoons are known for only eating the heads off a chicken and they will continue to return every night until they have killed your entire flock. Your roosting coup must have lockable door and be very sturdy and secure since raccoons are quite smart and very good climbers.
I saw them at it. I ran out with the dog and saw two foxes, one red, one grey, scale the fence and scarper.
We lock the chickens away at night, but like I said it was dusk, the hens were just settling in for the night — these foxes were smart.
Cap,
A solar charged, small electric fence charger with about 4″ standoffs near the base of your chicken fence and another set of standoffs about a foot down from the top. The actual chicken wire mesh should also be electrically grounded to a 4 foot to 6 foot long copper ground rod driven into the ground.
The purpose of grounding the chicken mesh is to ensure electrical connectivity during the dry summer months when the critter touches the “hot” wire then also touches the mesh.
Think of your chicken pen this way – If there is an opening large enough for the critter you do not want entering to get their head through… then they will get in. Where I live, this includes any egg eating snakes, including those that are otherwise quite desirable for the other services they provide. I’ve caught and relocated a few black rat and speckled king snakes so often they become docile to being captured. I had to relocate them because they decided that chicken eggs were preferable to their normal prey items.
The website linked below has many resources that may help you with your fox exclusion. When I was in uni, I had a unique opportunity to train with one of their engineers. It was an amazing opportunity and the engineer taught us the physics of physical and electrical fencing, all the why’s and how’s of the basic principles.
Agreed – I use an electric poultry fence on occasion and getting a good shock on the nose does tend to strongly discourage them. BUT it’s a pain if you want to let your birds roam further and we’ve had at least one fox that jumped a slightly sagging pice of the electric fence. We ended up having to put a second fence line up!
The fact that yours learned to scrabble over a 6ft fence is mind boggling! I would also not have thought that possible.
yes a hot wire will keep the foxes out. they can also, when desperate, stretch out the holes in the netting. i’ve had this happen. but the hot wire, that will keep them at bay.
We keep the cats inside to prevent them from being stolen. The fence is far enough from the street.
Maybe the oscilot system will work against foxes too.
There are also videos on youtube on how to do this with sewer pipes spinning.
The garden is like a prison with other systems, this looks elegant. https://www.catproofgardens.eu/
but it is expensive
Get a 110-conibear trap and set it with a piece of meat on the trigger outside the chicken coop (keep your dogs indoors.) They’ll try to bite off the meat and set the trap off, breaking their neck/back.
I cannot wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance of the people who are told warming but are freezing their butts off. Thanks for keeping us posted on reality. Folks here in Western North Carolina are into the AGW stuff. I just let them live in their own little world. They do not even think about the possibility of food shortages either. That’s their problem.
Cap, A couple of layers of barbed wire on the top and bottom perimeters deters them well enough, “aram”, I think is the word in Portuguese. Luckily there are not many foxes in the south of Portugal, its more the mongoose that are the problem here.
Hi,
I too keep hens and have a passionate dislike for foxes. My dad and I made a trap and have successfully trapped several of the vermin. The trap was a steel cage ( and old car roof cage actually) to form a 5 sided box. On the sixth side we constructed a drop gate out of two U channels and some steel grate inside. The grate was held up by a peg and when the fox entered it out weight on an old washing machine side panel inside and pulled the peg out, dropping the gate. The panel was covered in leaves and we used baked beans as bait inside. We despatched the fox when caught by covering the fox with a large plastic tarp and rolling a lawn mower underneath to affixiate the creature humanly.hopw this helps.
I just saw and article on my iPhone saying Antartica’s ice sheet is the smallest on record and it’s melting at an alarming rate! I thought it was gaining ice, is this just the MSM continuing with their bold face lies?
Hi Cap, sorry to hear about the loss of your chickens to foxes. I have had similar experiences with cougars, coyotes, owls, hawks, raccoons and weasels. Each predator type presents different attack vector(s) and associated response. Weasels for example can reach through chicken wire and kill your chickens by biting them on the neck to drink the blood. Weasels also remove just the head. Hardware cloth or metal is needed to defeat weasels and snakes. If your coop is not closed overhead a coyote will rush one side of the coop to cause your ducks or chickens to fly out of the run into the teeth of his partner. Raccoons are very adept at opening doors, gates and other means of ingress. My advice is to first identify all predator types you may encounter in your region. Keep in mind that all predators move in and out of a region looking for prey, so just because you don’t see a particular predator today doesn’t mean they won’t show up next week. Owls are nocturnal hunters and hawks hunt during the day, but they both occupy the same regions. I have not had to deal with foxes yet, but my understanding is they are difficult to eradicate without trained hunting dogs (fox hunts using dogs were employed because it works). I know you can call a coyote, but I am not sure that an ambush using a predator call will work for foxes. Fully enclosing your coop and run will go a long way. Adding perimeter mesh under the soil, or cement barriers to prevent digging is also prudent. You can also find raccoon proof latches for your chicken doors or employ an automated door without latches. Myself, I am building my birds an aircrete bunker and a fully enclosed run for use during the day. I wish you luck in your journey.
Indeed the Antarctic ice sheet has been shrinking.
However, there has actually been surprisingly little mention of this by the MSM. Problem for them is although they would absolutely love to go banging on about a shrinking Antarctica they would have to reconcile this with the consistent recent record cold.
And if record cold means shrinking ice, is sea level rise threat a function of low temperatures rather than high? A can of worms few MSM journalists would want to dip their scaley fingers in to.
I read in the Comments section to your last blog entry about the record cold of Antarctica last week (see the picture of the South Pole with all the flags around it) that this was caused by a more intense anticyclone causing strong katabatic winds on the one hand dispersing the sea ice northwards away into warmer waters further north, but on the other hand bringing colder than usual weather to Australia and South America.
Hi!
I live in Portugal, not that far from you. In may view the predator that decapitated your birds is not a fox. I don´t know the name in english. Here foxes usually take one chiken and leave, to come next night. They don´t decapitate chickens!
Now i have four dogs. Even so, from time to time i leave chikens not guarded, and foxes come to take one at a time. ! You have to keep birds closed at night. I had to do it.
You can easily build a fox trap by taking a 6″ piece of stove pipe 36 inches long and burying it in the ground at a 45 degree angle. You might need to put gravel at the bottom to allow for rainwater, so you would need to dig the hole 6″ deeper. Put a can of cat food or sardines at the bottom of the pipe. Foxes go in and can’t back out.
We have trees in the chicken yard so no overhead wire fence roof is possible. The fox cleared the 8 ft high fence…jump and scramble over. But I stopped them. I put a 45 degree, 24 fence angled out at the top….a common thing on chain link steel post fences. My fence has wood post so I cut 24″ piece of 2 x 4, screwd it into the post, attached chicken wire, overlapped the two fenceing materials….so I ended up with about 21″ of fence sticking out from the 8 ft high fence…up near the top. They can not get by it. I have watched them try.
I believe that it is sea ice that is melting around the continent of Antartica and not the ice sheet that covers most of the continent. When the sea ice melts, the sea level remains the same as it was with the ice floating in it. Water begins to expand at about 4 degrees F. until it turns to ice, which floats because its specific gravity is lower than the water, but it’s weight remains the same. The frozen water/ice displaces a volume of water identical to the volume of water that froze, and when it melts, it will contract to its original volume.
oceanservice.noaa.gov › facts › oceanfreeze.html
Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit but seawater freezes at about 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit, because of the salt in it.
I used to farm free range pasture eggs. If it wasnt foxes, it was eagles. The ONLY thing that kept the foxes out was electric fencing. 2 strand and a third for earthing if the ground gets dry to guarantee they get zapped. Set it up as a perimeter fence to keep them away from the coop then they cant get close enough to dig or climb, or one halfway up your 6ft fence and one along the top. If your fence is made of wire, earth the wire mesh to ground and obviously keep the live wires insulated from it. Its easy to do and not that expensive.
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I have small animal mesh up to a metre and a half, with heavy chain link horizontal for two feet on the ground and wired to the small animal mesh to stop any digging in. Then everything roofed over with plastic bird mesh on polypipe hoops. No fox could get a purchase on it.
If you want your chickens to be able to range during the day it is possible to create a ladder on each side to an entrance/exit at high level. Ladders with smooth metal tubular rungs well spaced will deter any fox but enable the chickens to travel.
@Cap, sorry to hear about the chickens.
I agree with Alan, you also need to fence / screen the top. I used 2 x 8 wood to hold up the mesh. I have to deal with hawks, fishers, coyotes, raccoons, foxes, owls, and the occasional bear. Also mesh under the soil will prevent predators from digging a hole under the fence. I also installed an inexpensive wyze cam to monitor from anywhere. Saves me having to go outside and look.
Thank you Alan — I’ll be sure to incorporate these ideas in my ‘upgrade’.
Interestingly, Indian flour is on sale here in Western Australia, a State that produces millions of tonnes of wheat (hence the wheat belt East and North of Perth)
In Manitoba Canada as well. Likely last season’s harvest.
Australia is now in Autumn. Spring is not until September.
Duh! Corrected. Thank you.
https://www.roofingmegastore.co.uk/blog/chicken-coop-roofing-guide.html
https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/best-chicken-run-roof-ideas/
Thank you for the link.
I’ve had the same problem with foxes. They would dig under the hen house to get to the chickens. I ended up digging a trench around the house and pen about 6 inches deep and 1 foot wide, laid chicken wire down in the trench and attaching it with steel tywire to the bottom of the pen perimeter and covering the laid chicken wire back up with the dirt.
By the way, my biggest problem with predators by far is from raccoons. They are little terrorists.
I’m fortunate we don’t get raccoons here.
I may dig a similar sized trench–only fill it with concrete.
Thanks Robert.
Although I don’t have problems with foxes I have lost several flocks of chooks and ducks to local dogs. I now have a high fence with a chain mesh roof. It took some doing to construct but worth the time and expense. Haven’t lost a chook in years, and they are free ranged for several hours each evening before putting themselves to bed on nightfall. The base of the fence and gate is cemented to prevent dogs digging underneath, another expense but worth every penny. I used a chain mesh as it is way stronger than the light chicken mesh and lasts for many years, mine is over 20 years old how and has a few more year in it, although it does look its age.
Yes, I think I’m going to have to build something similar.
Thanks Terry.
Find their den. This time of yr they’re very secretive If you can find the den you will disrupt them and they may just move on.
Consider that the changes in climate w effect them too.
I’ll go on den hunt with my kids.
Get guineas, haven’t lost one since addition of guineas. More effective than my peacocks. They are alert 24/7. We rebuilt barrier fencing in concrete filled trench too, deters digging under by any predators.
Hey Lela,
I did actually try guineas. Although they were loud and alerted us to trouble, they were also (all 8 of them) eaten by Mr Fox.
Get a guard goose 🙂
https://hellohomestead.com/why-geese-are-good-guard-animals/
Cap, constantly moving your site is not going to help stop attacks, they will just attack the new site. You should be using something like Cloudfare to protect against DOS attacks.
I do use cloudflare, Jim.
Moving the site worked in the past, for a time — it may also allow me to put a few ads back on, for a time.
We’ll see.
Do you know why you’re under a much more sustained attack than other climate realist blogs such as http://www.notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com
Cap, did you see the Foxes? Because we lost a whole coop full of Chickens to Racoons and they were all beheaded. They didn’t even EAT them! They just tore off their little heads and the rooster who tried to defend them was torn up horribly and killed. One of the Saddest days of my life. They were not just egg layers, they were my babies, raised from tiny chicks. I’m so sorry for your loss!!! Mandy in Michigan, USA.
Hey Mandy,
Yes, I saw them at it. I ran out with the dog and saw two foxes scale the fence and scarper. It is sad and disappointing, for many reasons. And it’s the second time it’s happened this year already! The first time the foxes dug in — so I sorted that; now they’re scaling the fence. I need to get mean, me thinks.
The critter that broke into your chicken house was a raccoon and very likely a family group. Raccoons are known for only eating the heads off a chicken and they will continue to return every night until they have killed your entire flock. Your roosting coup must have lockable door and be very sturdy and secure since raccoons are quite smart and very good climbers.
I saw them at it. I ran out with the dog and saw two foxes, one red, one grey, scale the fence and scarper.
We lock the chickens away at night, but like I said it was dusk, the hens were just settling in for the night — these foxes were smart.
Cap,
A solar charged, small electric fence charger with about 4″ standoffs near the base of your chicken fence and another set of standoffs about a foot down from the top. The actual chicken wire mesh should also be electrically grounded to a 4 foot to 6 foot long copper ground rod driven into the ground.
The purpose of grounding the chicken mesh is to ensure electrical connectivity during the dry summer months when the critter touches the “hot” wire then also touches the mesh.
Think of your chicken pen this way – If there is an opening large enough for the critter you do not want entering to get their head through… then they will get in. Where I live, this includes any egg eating snakes, including those that are otherwise quite desirable for the other services they provide. I’ve caught and relocated a few black rat and speckled king snakes so often they become docile to being captured. I had to relocate them because they decided that chicken eggs were preferable to their normal prey items.
The website linked below has many resources that may help you with your fox exclusion. When I was in uni, I had a unique opportunity to train with one of their engineers. It was an amazing opportunity and the engineer taught us the physics of physical and electrical fencing, all the why’s and how’s of the basic principles.
am.gallagher.com/en-US/Solutions/Electric-Fencing-Solutions#system%20type=Electric%20Fencing
Brilliant advice.
Thank you.
Agreed – I use an electric poultry fence on occasion and getting a good shock on the nose does tend to strongly discourage them. BUT it’s a pain if you want to let your birds roam further and we’ve had at least one fox that jumped a slightly sagging pice of the electric fence. We ended up having to put a second fence line up!
The fact that yours learned to scrabble over a 6ft fence is mind boggling! I would also not have thought that possible.
yes a hot wire will keep the foxes out. they can also, when desperate, stretch out the holes in the netting. i’ve had this happen. but the hot wire, that will keep them at bay.
We keep the cats inside to prevent them from being stolen. The fence is far enough from the street.
Maybe the oscilot system will work against foxes too.
There are also videos on youtube on how to do this with sewer pipes spinning.
The garden is like a prison with other systems, this looks elegant.
https://www.catproofgardens.eu/
but it is expensive
Get a 110-conibear trap and set it with a piece of meat on the trigger outside the chicken coop (keep your dogs indoors.) They’ll try to bite off the meat and set the trap off, breaking their neck/back.
I need to get me one of these.
I cannot wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance of the people who are told warming but are freezing their butts off. Thanks for keeping us posted on reality. Folks here in Western North Carolina are into the AGW stuff. I just let them live in their own little world. They do not even think about the possibility of food shortages either. That’s their problem.
Cap, A couple of layers of barbed wire on the top and bottom perimeters deters them well enough, “aram”, I think is the word in Portuguese. Luckily there are not many foxes in the south of Portugal, its more the mongoose that are the problem here.
Yes, barb will be my first go to.
Maybe some electric wire, too.
Thanks Steven.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
Thank you Cap. Truth will win eventually.
Hi,
I too keep hens and have a passionate dislike for foxes. My dad and I made a trap and have successfully trapped several of the vermin. The trap was a steel cage ( and old car roof cage actually) to form a 5 sided box. On the sixth side we constructed a drop gate out of two U channels and some steel grate inside. The grate was held up by a peg and when the fox entered it out weight on an old washing machine side panel inside and pulled the peg out, dropping the gate. The panel was covered in leaves and we used baked beans as bait inside. We despatched the fox when caught by covering the fox with a large plastic tarp and rolling a lawn mower underneath to affixiate the creature humanly.hopw this helps.
I’ve just found a similarly-functioning trap online — think I’ll probably purchase it.
Thank you Peter.
I just saw and article on my iPhone saying Antartica’s ice sheet is the smallest on record and it’s melting at an alarming rate! I thought it was gaining ice, is this just the MSM continuing with their bold face lies?
Hi Cap, sorry to hear about the loss of your chickens to foxes. I have had similar experiences with cougars, coyotes, owls, hawks, raccoons and weasels. Each predator type presents different attack vector(s) and associated response. Weasels for example can reach through chicken wire and kill your chickens by biting them on the neck to drink the blood. Weasels also remove just the head. Hardware cloth or metal is needed to defeat weasels and snakes. If your coop is not closed overhead a coyote will rush one side of the coop to cause your ducks or chickens to fly out of the run into the teeth of his partner. Raccoons are very adept at opening doors, gates and other means of ingress. My advice is to first identify all predator types you may encounter in your region. Keep in mind that all predators move in and out of a region looking for prey, so just because you don’t see a particular predator today doesn’t mean they won’t show up next week. Owls are nocturnal hunters and hawks hunt during the day, but they both occupy the same regions. I have not had to deal with foxes yet, but my understanding is they are difficult to eradicate without trained hunting dogs (fox hunts using dogs were employed because it works). I know you can call a coyote, but I am not sure that an ambush using a predator call will work for foxes. Fully enclosing your coop and run will go a long way. Adding perimeter mesh under the soil, or cement barriers to prevent digging is also prudent. You can also find raccoon proof latches for your chicken doors or employ an automated door without latches. Myself, I am building my birds an aircrete bunker and a fully enclosed run for use during the day. I wish you luck in your journey.
https://twitter.com/SikhForTruth/status/1628171379487956997?cxt=HHwWioCzvcjPtpgtAAAA
Please everyone look at this. I was unaware that it was started in 1992
Agenda 21 https://twitter.com/SikhForTruth/status/1628171379487956997?cxt=HHwWioCzvcjPtpgtAAAA
Indeed the Antarctic ice sheet has been shrinking.
However, there has actually been surprisingly little mention of this by the MSM. Problem for them is although they would absolutely love to go banging on about a shrinking Antarctica they would have to reconcile this with the consistent recent record cold.
And if record cold means shrinking ice, is sea level rise threat a function of low temperatures rather than high? A can of worms few MSM journalists would want to dip their scaley fingers in to.
I read in the Comments section to your last blog entry about the record cold of Antarctica last week (see the picture of the South Pole with all the flags around it) that this was caused by a more intense anticyclone causing strong katabatic winds on the one hand dispersing the sea ice northwards away into warmer waters further north, but on the other hand bringing colder than usual weather to Australia and South America.
Hi!
I live in Portugal, not that far from you. In may view the predator that decapitated your birds is not a fox. I don´t know the name in english. Here foxes usually take one chiken and leave, to come next night. They don´t decapitate chickens!
Now i have four dogs. Even so, from time to time i leave chikens not guarded, and foxes come to take one at a time. ! You have to keep birds closed at night. I had to do it.
Don´t give up!
You can easily build a fox trap by taking a 6″ piece of stove pipe 36 inches long and burying it in the ground at a 45 degree angle. You might need to put gravel at the bottom to allow for rainwater, so you would need to dig the hole 6″ deeper. Put a can of cat food or sardines at the bottom of the pipe. Foxes go in and can’t back out.
We have trees in the chicken yard so no overhead wire fence roof is possible. The fox cleared the 8 ft high fence…jump and scramble over. But I stopped them. I put a 45 degree, 24 fence angled out at the top….a common thing on chain link steel post fences. My fence has wood post so I cut 24″ piece of 2 x 4, screwd it into the post, attached chicken wire, overlapped the two fenceing materials….so I ended up with about 21″ of fence sticking out from the 8 ft high fence…up near the top. They can not get by it. I have watched them try.
I believe that it is sea ice that is melting around the continent of Antartica and not the ice sheet that covers most of the continent. When the sea ice melts, the sea level remains the same as it was with the ice floating in it. Water begins to expand at about 4 degrees F. until it turns to ice, which floats because its specific gravity is lower than the water, but it’s weight remains the same. The frozen water/ice displaces a volume of water identical to the volume of water that froze, and when it melts, it will contract to its original volume.
Correction. Water begins to expand at about 36 degrees F., that is four degrees above the freezing point.
oceanservice.noaa.gov › facts › oceanfreeze.html
Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit but seawater freezes at about 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit, because of the salt in it.
It does expand before it’s frozen. 🙂
I used to farm free range pasture eggs. If it wasnt foxes, it was eagles. The ONLY thing that kept the foxes out was electric fencing. 2 strand and a third for earthing if the ground gets dry to guarantee they get zapped. Set it up as a perimeter fence to keep them away from the coop then they cant get close enough to dig or climb, or one halfway up your 6ft fence and one along the top. If your fence is made of wire, earth the wire mesh to ground and obviously keep the live wires insulated from it. Its easy to do and not that expensive.