More chicken issues.

My wife's friends home boards Harold Parker State Park in Mass. She had 12 chickens now she has 4. They used cage traps and caught a fox pup. (They let it go because it was cute). So trapping is out of the question.

How hard would it be to exclude a backyard from red fox? Install a four foot fence and dig 18" down and install a gravel or fence barrier so the fox can't dig under the fence.

Isn't that all that needs to be done.

Fox climbing fence-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTEjdEgqvf0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFI2ACZ5Z4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6RPA8aQIlw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrL3C_9ZOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDscuk4ogL8

Here is a link to a similar thread- http://www.trapperman.com/forum/ubbthrea..._pr#Post4505342

Ok shows you I don't know what I am talking about.

Can they climb a wood fence?

Howa bout your idea of the fence, going just a bit higher ...but in the style of a suicide fence (upside down J) ...making the J part like 3 feet wide and on the end of that rebar ..covered with 2 inch pcv pipe so it spins...kinda like a coyote fence...google that and see what you see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDscuk4ogL8 wood fence

Only in America would anyone build a 5,000 dollar fence, to save 40 bucks worth the chickens , that lay 2 dollar a dozen eggs........LOL

not about that at all tho.

how many people lose money hunting for quail, turkey, deer, and especially elk?

or gardening? Expensive. Its about having a hobby that produces quality food that I know isn't poop.

^^^or the biggest waste, fishing. Yet u can find me at the lake anyday.

Has anyone thought of just making sort of an awning? Like the do to predator shield trees for wood duck boxes

Easiest fix is KFC, finger licking good. If you are going to raise chickens, you need to have the natural instinct to kill fox, coons, coyotes, opossums, black snakes... Without that instinct, you will be forever mourning the loss of your flock.

In my area free range chickens are "dead hens walking". It seems to me that due to four legged and winged predators that a portable chicken coop/tractor would be more cost effective.

What Mike K said, the portable coop can be a great setup, friends who run a "natural" farm in MI when we worked there had a portable coop that was built on an old hay wagon (up off the ground). They experienced very little loss and they had all the typical predators aerial and terrestrial on their acreage.

Now, if you don't close the coop door at night (which happens) it is game on and you are going to lose big depending on the critter that gets in there.

They also raised turkeys each year and had portable hutches that allowed a "free range" experience without completely turning them loose to get into trouble.

We had chickens on the farm I grew up on along with geese and ducks and other farm stock. They were allowed to do as they wanted and we took eggs from the ones using nest boxes inside the barn in a coop that was left open.

Dogs got some, fox got others, weasels on occasion, however, we always had more chickens and rarely did we add to them in the 18+ years that I paid attention and was on site...

On the market end of things, there are more and more folks for a variety of reasons (raising their own food, teaching their kids where food comes from, marketing to farm to table places), the folks that can figure out innovative ways to help these folks raise their farm stock in a free range situation will make some money.

Some of these issues are old and time tested and we all know it is an uphill battle that can seem more like a hobby than something you "win" at, however folks are going to keep doing it so why not think outside the box and try to create something that works.

***

.02

Justin

This is for Albert Burns, who sees things pretty much the way I do. ( You need to put this story in context. I was probably three years old at the time ) Okay, I heard that; who said, "You still are?"

The landlord lived downstairs and had a laying hen in the backyard. Every day one of the chicks would disappear. Nobody could figure out what kind of predator would remove just one chick at a time.

So the fourth or fifth day that this thievery had been going on, I happened to be by the brood hen, when along comes this yellow lab that I've never seen before.

He delicately lifts up the hen, grabs a fuzzy yellow chick in his mouth, and takes off for home. ( Which happens to be at least one third of a mile to the east.

So I probably used my attorney language and said something legalese like, "Doggie take bird." Fortunately this seemed to make sense to the adults, who contacted the dogs owner ( Who had no idea where these baby chicks were coming from ) and the poaching ended.

My recall of things that took place before I was seven years old had always been mystifying to my parents. Unfortunately, things that have happened in the last seven days are now mystifying to me! Laugh all you want. Your day is coming!