Family Fox
May 8th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Posted in farming
I suspected it was a fox that executed the brazen, daylight attack on our chickens. And my suspicious were I believe confirmed the other day when I looked out the kitchen window and was startled to see a fox looking back at me from the ridge line leading to the upper pasture.
But it wasn’t just one fox. It was a mother fox with two young kits leaping and bounding through the grass at her side. Flush with anger, I tore up the hill after them. The mother turned and ran toward the woods. She must have been trying to lead me away from her pups, because when I turned and looked for them behind me, I noticed they had relocated sideways to a spot near the hedgerow and were watching me intently. You see them peering at me in the photo, taken with my camera’s zoom feature.
When I took a step toward them, the kits ducked into the grass and disappeared. Closer inspection revealed a series of large holes dug into the side of the hedgerow. Their den, I do believe.
Meanwhile, the remaining chickens–13 laying hens, one rooster–were safe, scratching in the grass behind their new electric netting. Could they co-exist with a family of foxes living just a few yards away?
While I pondered that question, we next saw not two but four kits cavorting along the same ridge just a few days later. And there were two–not just one–mother foxes sunning themselves in plain view. This time I found another series of den holes on the east side of the hedgerow, maybe 150 feet from the first.
So we have two fox families on the property. “How do we get rid of them?” my wife asked.
Well, we don’t. We just have to hope they stay on their side of the electric netting and leave the chickens alone.
I told this story to one of our clients who buys eggs and he said he and his wife have seven foxes living behind their house in Cambridge village. I wondered how he knew so precisely how many there were. But he’s a naturalist and a hunter, so I suppose he’s made a study of them. “They do keep the rabbits down, so that’s good for the garden,” the man remarked.
If the foxes can control the voles that eat our tomatoes, that could be a good thing. Just as long as they keep their paws off the chickens. But I suspect these foxes don’t mean to keep a permanent residence on our hedgerow. Our hedgerow was just a convenient place to raise their young.
But I could be wrong about that.
So glad you are willing to leave the foxes to their own way of life. — barbara