Insufficient paint

[Flyfisher]

I'm sure there must be foxes around us but I've never seen one. If you have dog-walkers reporting bold-as-brass foxes during the day then it sounds like you have a bigger fox problem than us. Otherwise, perhaps we have just been lucky.

The fencing was a pretty easy DIY job and took about 3 days for a fence that used about 40 posts in total. I'm sure a professional would have done it in one day though! I used 1.8m, 2-3 inch round posts, which cost £1 each from a local sawmill. They can be banged into the ground fairly easily with one of those "post-basher" thingies. Use slightly thicker posts (straining posts) at the ends of each run or where the fence changes direction. Use the 2-3 inch posts as braces. Then run three strands of fencing wire between the posts; I think I used 4mm wire. Don't staple the wire tightly on the posts, the staples are only to hold them against the posts. Use adjustable wire tensioners at one end of the run. I prefer the ratchet type as they are easy to re-tension with a spanner if the wire stretches (which is why you shouldn't fix the staples tightly against the wire). Tight wires as essential for a good fence of this type. Then fix the 1.05m rabbit fencing to the fence wire using thin garden wire or the like and staple it to the end posts. Hey presto!

For some great information, look at the fencing book on here: http://handbooks.btcv.org.uk/handbooks/index. It will tell you everything you need to know in great detail and with excellent drawings. It can be a bit tricky to get the posts dead vertical but that's just an aesthetic issue. You'll also need a gate of course. I made mine as the first exercise for my newly-purchased morticer, but it's just as easy to make one with handtools.

Let me know if you need any more info.

 

[JoceAndChris]

That's so impressive - what a neat and lovely job you did. So much grass too, lucky, lucky chickens.

It probably wouldn't keep foxes out but it's certainly a deterrant and will stop the chickens, as you say, from wandering into wilder areas. I think you have a dog too? That supposedly deters foxes.

I'd like to copy your model (on a smaller scale ) and have those thin strands of electric wire on the other side of the fence. A fantastic help, thank you.

 

[MdB]

I think you have a dog too? That supposedly deters foxes.

For a while, our local fox used to come straight through our garden late evening, leave a present in the middle of the lawn if we were lucky. The fact that we had two dogs, who also left presents :evil: , didn't seem to bother it a bit.

 

[Flyfisher]

Like MdB, I'm not sure the dog is a big deterrent - anyway it's not outside all the time. I've also heard that, er, weeing around the place can also help deter foxes, but I'm not entirely convinced.

The fence was really only intended to be chicken-proof, which it is. Only one has ever got out and that was only because we'd let its flight feathers grow back, but that was soon fixed with a pair of scissors.

I don't know how high foxes can jump but I'd bet it would be more than 1m. I suppose you could build a higher fence but an electric fence might be less visually intrusive. Gamekeepers use them around release pens, usually two strands on separate small posts about one foot outside the main fence.

Electric fence
A simple two-strand electric fencing system is recommended for all open topped pens to deter foxes. It should be set 15cm and 30cm high and approximately 30cm out from the pen wire. Systems powered by a 12-volt car battery are ideal and easy to maintain. It may be necessary to spray the ground where the electric fencer is used with a strong herbicide to prevent vegetation from short circuiting the system.

You could just build the chicken fence first and keep the electric fence as a possible option if that alone doesn't do the trick.

Good luck.

 

[Nigel Watts]

I quite often see foxes in my street in Islington, a London borough which is one of the least well provided with green space in the capital. I cant imagine where they live, but I guess there is plenty of food waste for them to scavenge. They seem quite harmless, but then I am not trying to keep chickens. How do they get on with cats? We have plenty of them in our street too.

 

[skier-hughes]

We lost 6 chickens then 8 chickens to foxes. We then housed them in using builders heras security fencing, so they have a reasonable sized run and no foxes at all, as it is also roofed.

We have foxes coming through the garden at 1.30 in the afternoon.
We have two dogs that are outside most of the time, but that doesn't appear to make much difference.
Female urine is better than male.

We used an elctric fence to begin with, but it doesn't get on with dogs or cats, Lucy thinks the chickens will electrocute her, so she steers well clear, whereas Bonnie will come in the pen with me at feeding time!!!!

 

[Nigel Watts]

Female urine is better than male.

Not living in the countryside I am so glad I don't have to hold opinions on such things.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Foxes are extremely agile, I've seen them manage 5 feet jumps with ease. In order to build a fox proof run one needs to make it 7 feet high with a roof. The base must have chicken wire extending across the ground on all sides 2 feet like a skirt, to deter digging. The shed must be ensconced and stapled with wire to avoid demolition by fox or badger. This we did. I have faith in our construction, it's Fort Knox. I also spent the whole summer weeing everywhere, fat lot of good that did.

To answer your questions Nigel, they live in people's gardens in N London. My friend Triona had 4. They got the mange, she treated them (she's a playwright). Lots of my friends feed them. And there's fox food in the local shop here. It's nuts. Some of them are so tame they'll take food from your hand. I think they're so clever they know not to upset people's cats as that will upset the people and right now foxes are onto a really good thing and don't want to rock the boat. But maybe I attribute them too much intelligence. I've heard of foxes killing cats. I've also heard foxes in my garden having a stand off with my cat, who won, but he's a tiger.

FF, thanks for the further info on electric fencing. I think it's the way to go. I want to fence the whole area and slowy increase the stock- lavender araucanas, silver spangled Appenzellers, gold laced Wyandottes, chocolate marans, lemon millefleur sablepoots. They're all so exquisite, I can't possibly stop at blue Orps.

Skier Hughes, I'm also sad to hear of your losses.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Bring back the hunt, I say.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Well of course as a budding poultry keeper I completely agree with you. It's absolutely diabolical that they've banned the hunt which used to take place on this hill on the grounds of excessive cruelty or some such nonsense and put nothing in place to cull what must be the most excessively cruel animal in existence. Just below me is a crematorium and graveyard, riddled with fox holes. There are no prizes for guessing what those animals are feeding on when there's nothing else. It's a disgrace.

Fifty years ago this hill was well cared for. There was a farm, the rabbits were protected by them for them to sell and there weren't foxes. Now there are literally thousands of rabbits and an ever increasing supply of feasting foxes that nothing preys on. If they don't fancy rabbit they pop to town and have McDonalds. Where is it all going to end?

 

[Nigel Watts]

In spite of being a townie living in Islington I completely agree about the craziness of banning fox hunting. It is all too easy for we urbanites to forget about the realities of life and death when it comes to managing the countryside and producing the food we like to eat. Fernley-Whittingstall's book on Meat was an eye opener to me when I read it. If we eat meat we need to face up to the moral issues of how we look after and slaughter it. (Sorry - going even further off topic here).

On the original question of paint, did you use a roller or a brush? I find that the paint goes much further with a brush but the finish is usually better with the roller.

 

[Schoolmarm]

In our area the hunt used to let foxes loose so they had something to hunt.

 

[Wren]

We have always found that moveable electric poultry netting works just fine for keeping the foxes out. However this weekend two large dogs managed to break through (fortunately my other half was there to stop the carnage). Everyone we know that keeps chickens has suffered from dog attack and has either turned their place into fort knox or given up. Out-of-control dogs are the real menace of the country side - if it is not someone's poultry then its lambs they go after or anything else that gets in their way.
My sympathy for the poor fox-hunter is somewhat diminished on the advice of my sister - she always used to say that you can tell the stables that hunt because they don't look after their horses properly.

 

[Matt Green]

It's absolutely diabolical that they've banned the hunt which used to take place on this hill on the grounds of excessive cruelty or some such nonsense and put nothing in place to cull what must be the most excessively cruel animal in existence.

2nd most. And the lack of a cull is the problem, not the movement of specific mammalian pest control out of the private sector.

Where is it all going to end?

Forum threads going wildly off topic?
Pointless hand-wringing about finiancially and socially exclusive blood sports?
Lines being drawn about issues not relating to the preservation of period properties?
Anecdotes being passed off as evidence-based reasoning?
Agreeing with 'articles' published in the Daily Mail
Moderators locking threads?
A return of legalised badger-baiting (possibly less gratitas behind that one...)?
or, and I'm being extrememist,

A conservative government?


really. stop it. threads like this go nowhere good.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Well, I'm sorry to offend you Matt but actually I think that the choice and creation of boundary fencing, planting or walling is extremely relevant to period properties and right now, the excess of foxes is very relevant to my life here. I also think that my motivation behind the poultry keeping, to protect and increase the number of old breeds of birds that aren't grown commercially also goes hand and hand with some of the conservationist ethics many of us treasure in this forum, and is completely in keeping with living in a period property.

I posted last night in a very sorry state indeed and actually don't want to get drawn into the very fraught issue of fox hunting, so you're projecting rather a lot onto me there. You may wish for politics never to be mentioned on this forum - but it would be an anodyne version if every thread was simply a question and answer session on mixing lime mortar. There is no need for you to read this far if you dislike it.

On the issue of threads going wildly off topic, they always have. As it's my thread no offence is caused - to me at any rate. And if anyone would like to discuss antique bodkins or willow weaving they should just do so. I think we should leave moderating up to the mods, Matt.

 

[skier-hughes]

I wondered about growing some willow to make a woven willow archway as an entrance to the house

 

[Penners]

We have always found that moveable electric poultry netting works just fine

Ah, but foxes aren't likely to hunt electric poultry, are they?

 

[Penners]

stop it. threads like this go nowhere good.

Oh, come on, Matt. When a group of friendly people have a social chit-chat, the conversation wanders all over the place. What's wrong with that?

 

[Penners]

And if anyone would like to discuss antique bodkins or willow weaving they should just do so.

My bodkin probably qualifies as antique, now. Not worth much, though. Probably only good for making my quietus.

 

[MdB]

stop it. threads like this go nowhere good.

Oh, come on, Matt. When a group of friendly people have a social chit-chat, the conversation wanders all over the place. What's wrong with that?

Nothing in general, the problem comes when a highly contentious issue is raised such as blood sports. Many people, my self included, find blood sports highly offensive and wish that they didn't exist. I fully understand that other people don't agree with this and feel equally strongly in the opposite direction so care needs to be made by all concerned in what is said.

For the record, I have no problem with calling foxes vermin and that their numbers need to be controlled. I also have no problems with someone with a fox problem paying somebody to humanely reducing the local population by shooting them or similar. What I do have a very big problem with is the use of non humane methods which have been shown to do little in dealing with the vermin issue and have been turned into a sport where the main aim is the enjoyment of the people involved.