hunting squirrels, I got a bird

[rogprov]

Very sorry David to read your sad tale but please don't try shooting a fox with an air rifle you'll not make a clean kill and only injure it. Poison bait is a big no also ... what you going to use and if you did what else (as you did say) will get killed? I've kept chickens (lots) and, despite their presence in the area, never ever lost any to a fox. The onus is on the chicken owner to keep them safe. Killing a fox never will work for long because another will simply take over the vacant territory.


Changing the subject ... I didn't know Don liked squirrels

Here's one from a couple of days ago ... looking in the kitchen window and taken through the glass.

[David Kilpatrick]

Very sorry David to read your sad tale but please don't try shooting a fox with an air rifle you'll not make a clean kill and only injure it. Poison bait is a big no also ... what you going to use and if you did what else (as you did say) will get killed? I've kept chickens (lots) and, despite their presence in the area, never ever lost any to a fox. The onus is on the chicken owner to keep them safe. Killing a fox never will work for long because another will simply take over the vacant territory.

Yes, the only way I would have considered it was at point-blank range - which might have been possible, given the fox's behaviour. I've kept chickens here in a walled garden for fifteen years and we have never had a fox within Kelso town. Now the poor things remaining are stuck in a cage run by day and locked in at night, the worst possible situation in winter. We do have a run with high walls and fences, but it get little sun at this time of year, it is impossible to see into it and it seems the fox is able to get over almost anything. It despatched one chicken on top of a 2.5m wall where it was roosting, in the middle of the garden - I found the feathers after getting up there with a ladder to check. Fortunately our most beautiful tiny bantam, a miniature Dutch which came to us by being found loose in a neighbour's garden two years ago, is OK. This little bird can fly well enough, and occasionally takes off for a week or two before returning to the garden. She is no bigger than a pigeon.

Still, I've had 2 years of completely free range chickens throughout the entire garden, and they don't make it very useful as a garden - nor do we end up getting many eggs, as they are very clever at finding places to lay them. The answer may be to add another metre of wire net above the 2m plus fences, but my neighbours may not appreciate that. I think instead we will build a larger run in the spring, in sight of the house and keep only bantams. We both like to be able to see the birds. There is such a huge difference in the quality of eggs from truly free chickens and those just kept in a run with grass. Ours have been able to pick between possibly hundreds of plant species when feeding. We buy 'organic free range eggs' at the moment and they are tasteless things which don't even colour a batter mix yellow.

The fox will be reported to pest control on Monday. There are many domestic cats around here and a large fox resident in the town centre is not a good thing.

David

[pakodominguez]

Actually, I did get a squirrel...

100% crop

:-p