Double Down Chicken Disaster Strikes UK Homesteading Community
Today I read with sadness and dismay that my fellow UK homesteader @brimwoodfarm has suffered a fox raid on his chickens.
This was doubly sad as the fox killed all four of his rare breed Ixworth chickens - three hens and a rooster.
Ixworth are a heritage dual purpose breed that are good both for eggs and meat. I have been keen to get some to replenish my homestead flock for some time.
Geoff @brimwoodfarm had just recently offered to supply me with some Ixworth hatching eggs in the spring. That now must wait.
And here comes the real stinger in the bushy tail ... yesterday I lost two of my hens to a fox.
The predator of choice for my chickens has traditionally always been the buzzard. As my chicken pens are so large it has not been feasible to protect against aerial attack.
Although when we free-ranged the runner ducks in the field down to the lake we lost a few to the foxes they have never until now taken a chicken.
This was because both our chicken pens are surrounded by 6 foot fencing with 2 foot wire mesh skirting to prevent digging. Impenetrable to the fox and his crew.
Until now. When the snow came.
Along one side of the orchard pen are a row of conifer trees. These Leyland Cypress trees are very thick and dense and even in winter several of the hens prefer to fly up into them to sleep rather than going into the chicken coops.
That has always been fine. Each morning the hens come out of the trees, hop onto the fence and then down into the pen.
Then the heavy snow came and weighed down the dense conifer branches until they toppled over away from the pen.
Two of the hens roosting in the trees came down with the falling branches and then couldn't get back up into the pen.
This must have happened early morning - just about breakfast time for the patrolling fox.
My daughter called me to the conservatory to see the fox trotting away with one of the hens. I dashed outside and the fox dropped the hen. Although I could find no blood or bites she still warm but totally dead. She must have gone with a single neck break I guess.
I didn't know at that point what had happened with the fallen trees so I rushed to the orchard pen to check if the rest of the chickens were okay and if the fence had been breached.
A full perimeter search confirmed that the fence was still all intact but one more hen was missing.
Then I spotted the two new puppies getting very excited. They had found the kill spot for the missing hen. She must have put up a fight with the fox as there was a pile of white feathers on the red stained snow. But nothing else. Breakfast had already been served.
Luckily, if I can comparatively use that word against @brimwoodfarm 's loss, both my fallen hens were 4+ years old and past their laying best.
Hence my plan to bring in fresh stock with the Ixworth's.
So despite my building mighty defences of wood and steel, mother nature and a quick brown fox won the day.
That is life. That is death.
That was Pennsif's Progress - Day 826.
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[ all images by @pennsif ]
Ack! Sorry to hear that @pennsif. Poor hens - probably thought they were being safer up in the trees.
As for Ixworth...I still have these eggs so, with any luck, I'll get my flock going again. Won't be able to supply you with hatching eggs early in the year as I'd hoped though.
Good luck with the incubation. Have you got a Brinsea?
Are they easy to find if you have to buy new breeding stock?
I have. I had a nightmare with my crap China-made incubator last year and a very nice Facebook friend gifted me a couple of Octo 10's....the hatch rate is great!
I haven't find them THAT easy. However, I have a friend in Suffolk who has some stock left from her fox attack so we've agreed to swap cockerels again to try and diversify the gene pool a little.
I hope it all goes well with the incubation.
Maybe do a livestream of the hatching when it comes along... 😊
What a fun idea!
Argh, I'm sorry for your loss and that of @brimwoodfarm.
We have foxes here, but they claim that there are no foxes left on the island we come from. It seems we have so few predators here and likewise in most of the UK, but that doesn't ease the sting of the losses when they happen.
Foxes are very common here. And I guess getting more common since fox hunting was banned.
They will often come in the yard. The picture I use in my avatar is in fact one that we nicknamed Jasmine. She became semi-tame and would follow me round when I was feeding the chickens (the chickens were not so keen on that).
It's a never ending battle against the wildlife, my problem here in Canada is always the raccoon and Blackbears. I'm currently taking a year off chicken till we can totally redo a coop and run with an electric fence.
I think I have it lucky here. Keeping bears out I think would need more than my mesh fences.
Not sure about raccoons - do they dig or climb?
They climb AND dig and they have thumbs!! They are terrible! We've lost several hens to raccoons, until my husband made a small enclosure to lock them up at night. He built it from some left over commercial bathroom partisans from a job he had been working on, with 4 slide locks on the door. They haven't figured out how to get the door open yet, but they have figured out how to open the bottom two slide locks. We'll be installing padlocks soon. I hate raccoons.
Raccoons sound nasty. I'm glad Wales is a raccoon-free zone...
I had a fox take two of my new hens the other day and have since stopped free ranging him. He is very brazen and tries to get into the impenatrable run (they are locked away at night so even if he did get in, he'd not get them). I fantasize now about that brave fox being stuffed and on my chimney piece, with my hens drinking cognac around the fire and clucking at him in laughter, a sort of mcabre homesteading revenge fantasy ;) Following now, by the way.
Hi Donna. I've just seen your beautiful drawings - I particularly like the A Day at the Races piece.
I'm following along now to see when you capture your stuffed fox fantasy scene in chalk and ink...
Dang, that's an unfortunate series of circumstances. No way could anyone have predicted that sequence and outcome. Sending positive thoughts for the batch of eggs @brimwoodfarm is hoping to hatch.
Indeed, yes I thought I had all angles covered. Never factored in snow and falling trees.
This is sad news indeed. My condolences to both you and @brimwoodfarm. Losing stock is a nasty business. We haven't seen any foxes here, but we have seen and heard coyotes. Not thrilled having these guys so close to home.
Umm I don't know much about coyotes. Are they daring enough to come into your yard - or do they keep their distance?
So far they have kept their distance but we have five large dogs...
We've got two young puppies now. I hope they will become more of a deterrent to predators as they grow.
As long as they aren't like Copper, in the Fox and the Hound, and they make friends with the foxes! 😉
So sorry to hear about you and the neighbor losing your chickens. Here the predators are hawks. It truly is sad to lose any animal.
It is all part of homesteading. Learning to live with nature, but just tipping the balance in our favour. Sometimes it just slides the other way.
Sorry to hear about the chicken casualties. Those pesky predators are always looking for an easy meal.
The brown fox you mentioned looks a lot like the Red Fox we have around here (actually I did a bit of research and they might be the same species). I haven't had any issues with them yet but I only had chickens for one summer so far.
Hope you continue to stay safe from the foxes. They are more daring in the winter when food is scarce and have no worries in coming right up to the house.
Oh i'm so sorry to hear about both your chickens. Nature is cruel.
I love foxes and chickens, such a shame they can't live in harmony
Keeping livestock means you have to work with nature - but slightly tilt the balance in your favour.
Sorry, that really stinks. Hoping for a better day tomorrow and into the New year.
Thank you. I think when the snows come the foxes get hungrier and more daring.
Hopefully my two new puppies will start to scare the foxes away as they get bigger.