Pesky Foxes

Hi Friends.
I live on the outskirts of a large town,We are overrun with foxes,there must be at 30 on my little estate,they are tearing our gardens apart.
flower pots, plants,Ect.
Can any of you suggest a kind way of dealing with this problem.
I love wildlife any would,nt want any harm to come to them.
thanks

 

Have a look at this website; http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/environment/animal_welfare/urbanfoxes.php

 

That's a realy helpful link, HB. We have foxes here too, but they're VERY well fed by the incredibly large rabbit population here, so haven't been a problem.

I sympathise entirely with you, Roseman. You may be glad to see foxes around, but you don't want them damaging your garden, after all! :rolleyes:

 

Get a good dog Roseman ok for keeping cats out as well

 

They are a real pain, we used to have them a lot as one garden down the street was very unkept and the foxes could hide and sleep there. But now someone new has moved in and re-vamped the garden we get them less and less. Just make sure there are no gaps in your fences so that there isn't a clear way for them to get into your garden and that there is no food anywhere in the garden for them!

 

They are simply looking for food - grubs, mice etc in the pots. Not so sure a fence will stop them. I saw one jump over a 6 foot fence from a standing position....did not seem much effort.
Wonder how they are getting on with the new bins that everyone seems to have nowadays? At one time we would all have bin bags that were easily ripped open. Whether the population numbers built up and now we have a food shortage cause of more efficient waste dsiposal?
They are territorial and quite fiercely so. Try feeding and hopefully your fox will keep out the others out- better the devil you know principal. Usually things are not too bad if you have a resident fox who keeps intruders out of his territory. Problem is when you get a transient population fighting over a spare territory.
We used to have a fox family on our estate in our little town and there was never much of a problem, apart from the odd ripped open bin bag. They got quite tame. People would feed them and they would go to the car park near the take away after the pubs shut cause they knew they could scrounge a meal. In fact they lived under my shed for a while - good rodent control!

 

Excellent Geoff! I'm with you on this.

 

Well one of the foxes we had was partly because of me. One of my colleagues was a part time farmer and kids had brought a beaten up fox cub to him. So he took it home, bathed its wounds and fed it. I went round with my kids to see it and asked him what he was going to do with it.
He said he would release it in some woods on his farm cause they there were already foxes there. I replied to this by pointing out that it was adult foxes that had beaten up the cub and they would kill it - it needed somewhere where there was a spare territory. So the decision was made to release it in the school kitchen garden where we had built it a shelter.
On release the cub ran round and found a hole that grounds maintainance had ripped in the fence. It then hid in timber pile outside the woodwork room. for a few weeks we fed it on cat food and earth worms but eventually it disappeared and reappeared in town. It took up residence on a bank above the local garage. Every lunch time it came down and joined the mechanics while they had lunch. It made a beautiful animal and lived a good age for a wild fox.

 

Lovely true story GH. In '79 when I lived at Cliveden in Bucks, the local dog fox got killed one morning ( he used to come round the few houses on the estate although he was not a friendly animal-very territorial) and I used to keep my cats in when I saw him about. However after I saw him dead on the main road nearby I realised that his mate - who was obviously feeding cubs and was very thin- was trying to find food and so I put out complete tins of Whiskas (out of the tin of course) and other suitable food which she would come and take away.After some months she began to arrive with the cubs and my cats would sit out in the garden and watch them when they came to eat. Absolutely glorious to see!

 

Nice storys - makes up for some of the carnage on the roads. Well done both of you.