Fantastic Mr Fox

Well you’ve got to hand it to our friendly neighbourhood fox. Show him an impenetrable chicken run and he will show you a way to get into it. Our safe enclosure turned out not to be that safe after all and as a result we have again lost all our hens. Full marks to the fox though – a very clean job: only a few feathers and a spare head at the murder scene. We have deduced that it must have happened just after dawn. The fox made a hole in the top netting like this:



Then the trail of feathers, disturbed feeder and aforementioned body part led us to the hole at the other side of the run:





Enter, kill, exit. A perfectly executed multiple assassination job.

Of course, in retrospect the netting was not strong enough and we had not checked that every corner was tightly tied down. But the ingenuity of Mr Fox is really amazing. We suspect that he must have been casing the joint for some time before going in for the kill. Possibly this is why the chickens were not laying as well as they had been. Poor chicks...and good bye to those beautiful green eggs.




It is now a battle of wills with the fox – and we are determined that our next hens will have a long and happy life. The chicken fortress is going to be further reinforced and surrounded by the electric fence before we consider getting any more hens. Cambridge Poultry here we come....again.