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My chickens and ducks had free run of the garden until a fox visit three weeks ago - early evening, still daylight, it took the runner drake and a hen, came back next day and killed another. Not having anything else to hand, I made a run around their sheds with old sheep netting and set up electric tape outside that. It's keeping the ducks and Orps in but the mad bantams (old Skippy and her four daughters) just fly in and out. Keep thinking of clipping their wings, but I suspect they would still go over this 90cm fence and would be more at risk from the foxes if their ability to fly is compromised.
We haven't had any eggs from these girls since then - they lay blue/green eggs - so we suspected they were laying out in the field, which has dense environmental strip (aka thistles) around a rape crop. Two nights ago one bantie didn't come back to the shed to roost, but was pottering round the garden at 6am waiting for the others to be let out. Same last night, so this evening my daughter went looking for her and found her on a nest with 16 blue eggs, under a big cotoneaster bush outside the sitting room window! The front garden is overgrown with shrubs and perennials, and next-door's Land Rover is parked up against this bush.
We regularly hear foxes on the front drive and she's terribly vulnerable there. I don't have a proper broody coop but we usually put a dog crate in the barn - we ran out of light tonight and will move her and the eggs tomorrow, and hope she'll stay interested.... and that we don't end up with 16 little cockerels... I hope my three Orp chicks, now 7 weeks old, are girls!
We haven't had any eggs from these girls since then - they lay blue/green eggs - so we suspected they were laying out in the field, which has dense environmental strip (aka thistles) around a rape crop. Two nights ago one bantie didn't come back to the shed to roost, but was pottering round the garden at 6am waiting for the others to be let out. Same last night, so this evening my daughter went looking for her and found her on a nest with 16 blue eggs, under a big cotoneaster bush outside the sitting room window! The front garden is overgrown with shrubs and perennials, and next-door's Land Rover is parked up against this bush.
We regularly hear foxes on the front drive and she's terribly vulnerable there. I don't have a proper broody coop but we usually put a dog crate in the barn - we ran out of light tonight and will move her and the eggs tomorrow, and hope she'll stay interested.... and that we don't end up with 16 little cockerels... I hope my three Orp chicks, now 7 weeks old, are girls!
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