An Early Morning Visitor!

It was mid spring and the early dawn light was breaking; I was ripped from my sleep by my eldest daughter. She was shouting, crying, panicking...something about the chickens. Her room is at the back of the house, so she hears the chickens first thing in the morning quite often and had given false alarms before, but this time she was really scared! I grabbed my dressing gown and a torch and we ran out to the back garden. The flocks were all alarm calling, our Wyandotte Annie's high calls were particularly shrill and terrifying.

There was no sign of any predator in the run, but as we entered I saw white feathers along one fence and an initially unharmed looking Light Sussex lying gasping on the floor; my tamest Sussex, Omelette. As I drew closer I saw the small puncture mark next to her ear. My youngest daughter had joined us by this time and I asked her and her sister to check on the rest of the flock while I carried Omelette back to the house with a crazed hope that I could somehow save her. Of course I couldn't and she died in my arms before I could even cross the yard.

I wished my husband was there, but he'd been put on night shifts and wouldn't be home for another hour. So I laid Omelette on the outside table and returned to check on the rest of the flock. There were no more dead so the mass of feathers was still puzzling me until I saw Mallow, another Light Sussex, who looked like she only had her front half! With my heart in my throat I gathered her up for closer inspection and was relieved to see she'd just lost all her tail feathers and had just a shallow cut a few centimetres long. When we let our rooster out later he was very quiet and gentle with her, standing over her for most of the day.

When my husband came home he concluded that it was probably a cat as he didn't think a fox could get into the yard over smooth five foot fences and he thought a fox would have caused more damage. If it was a cat, I was annoyed that we couldn't have or rooster out as he would have seen it off. However, at the back of my mind I was wondering if it was a fox. Either way, fellow poultry keepers were telling me it would be back, so we shored up the coop defences and prepared to lock them in for the night. I didn't usually lock this flock in as the matriarch has a tendency to do herself injury when cooped up. So that night she went into the shed in a box to keep her dark and stop her injuring herself while the rest of the flock got locked into the coop. I was hoping it was a cat, as after reading up on what foxes could do I knew it could get past our defences if determined enough.

2am the next night my daughter was back in my room, something about it being in the coop...and I was following her outside again. She was running up to the coop, but the alarm calls were coming from some males we had in a chicken tractor, in a fully enclosed run on the other side of the garden. I shone the torch over there and my panic rose as a fox’s eyes reflected back at me! It was standing on the tractor and in that run was also our last bobwhite quail. I called to my daughter: "It's in this run!"

As we went over it ran to the far end of the run. I wasn't sure how it had gotten in, but suspected the closest end as that was less secure. It was staying as far away from us as it could, so I got my daughters to stand there while I called my husband. I was shaking so much I switched my phone off first try!

Now I should probably mention that here in Australia foxes are an introduced species which have caused some of the native species to become endangered. So if you capture one, it is illegal to release it again and we had inadvertently captured one! So my husband's plan was to shoot it with his bow, a quick kill.

Now picture this; the fox was in a fully enclosed run which is 8 feet high. Whenever we went near it went ballistic, jumping straight to the top, trying to get out. Jumping 8ft like it was nothing! Most people say 6ft is enough to keep them out of your property! The dog over the back fence was barking like crazy and hubby didn't dare to let his arrow loose above ground level as it would have gone through the fence and risked killing the neighbour's dog. So unfortunately he didn't get a clear shot and the fox finally shot past him and out.

In the morning light we found our quail. The fox hadn't had time to feed and had just killed her. It had gotten in by pushing the wire off the gate and we think it got out under a section that hadn't been anchored down properly. It certainly showed us our weak points. We found out that foxes can chew through chicken wire anyway, so we shored up all of the runs with a thicker wire along the bottom section which we also buried. We were already planning on making the last run fully enclosed, so this spurred us into action sooner.

The fox stayed away for a few days after it's ordeal with us, but got it's courage back soon enough. My daughter woke to it throwing itself against the coop one night before we'd finished the run. Eventually it did stop coming.

I am eternally grateful that my daughter was able to hear the commotion and fewer lives were lost because of it. We learnt a big lesson in not underestimating predators and where our defences were weak. As urban areas grow, predators lose their fear of people and come further in. They will even come in daylight hours if they know the food is locked away at night.

We never planned it this way, but our chickens are also our pets and I think it's hard not to feel close to them when you're in a small area with them. Most of them were raised from hatch by us and still come to us for hugs.

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