[News] Do you or your neighbours feed foxes?

[zefarelly]

We have chickens and have never lost one to the fox, we bought a proper chicken run.

I don't mind the screeching ginger gits, but I set the dog on them with regularity.

 

[1066familyman]

They are wild animals programmed to build up food stocks to cover times of shortage so they kill when they can and then usually stockpile it i.e. take it away and bury what they have caught.

They have killed pets but again very small numbers usually weak animals. Most foxes won't go near a cat because they know they will get severely damaged and that certainly the evidence of watching them near me. Again put this in perspective 230,000 cats knocked down and killed by drivers who in many cases don't stop to help.

Exactly. It's a bit rich when meat eaters who also anthropomorphize their pets then condemn a wild animal for doing what they just naturally do to survive.

And as for your point about cats. Again, 100% correct. I see foxes around our way every single night without fail and have seen hundreds of exchanges with cats. Always, the foxes and cats just give each other a wide berth.

 

[Surf's Up]

No - urban vermin. We have a resident pair and the whole road is united in their dislike of them ........ or are they How come they don't move on because no one feeds them and everyone is really careful with their rubbish or do they or are they is someone secretly feeding them while simultaneously seeming to be in the "Hate Camp" and the couple in whose garden they allegedly reside has even gone as far as naming them .... a somewhat unimaginative "Mr and Mrs Reynard"..... should we expect to see them both wearing a smug look and diamanté collars sometime soon

 

[Surf's Up]

.....the foxes that is, not the couple.

 

[LamieRobertson]

One near neighbour does ..fox always keeps off the grass and sticks to the pathways

 

[Tricky Dicky]

I have been sorely tempted to lately. I've had a female living under my summerhouse for years and every summer she has a set of cubs - 5 last year - and they are absolutely stunning running round the garden on the long summer evenings.

 

[Chicken Run]

Its funny how people seem to hate foxes and give them all sorts of attributes which are actually more common in the human species. As regards killing chickens there were 975 million (ish) killed in UK alone makes the numbers taken by foxes pretty paltry. time to give them a break and give wild life the respect it deserves.

Until it’s your child that has been ripped to shreds eh..... very blinkered view of the situation if you don’t mind me saying!

 

[Westdene Seagull]

I have in the past feed the foxes but one day in broad daylight one came into the garden and took one of my chickens ( who are free range during the day ). Have stopped feeding them since then and I regularly pee around the garden. Not had a problem since then. I don't hate the foxes generally though as I live on land that used to be downland so I'm the invader. That said when they wake me up at night having sex they're lucky I don't shoot them - partly because they've woken me up and party because I'm pissed off they're having sex and I'm not.

The the subject of killing for fun - they do indeed do so. My uncle is a farmer and they kill far more in one visit than they could possibly eat in months.

 

[wellquickwoody]

I wish someone would feed you to some foxes Wellthickwoody, then your ignorant opinions would at last dissapear from this board.

Ooh, someone who puts the welfare of animals above the welfare of humankind. Cannot get dafter than that.

 

[Wardy's twin]

Until it’s your child that has been ripped to shreds eh..... very blinkered view of the situation if you don’t mind me saying!

How many children have been attacked by foxes I would hazard a guess it is a lot less than have been attacked by dogs or knocked down by cars etc.

Not blinkered at all , a fox is a wild animal and needs to be treated with caution but that does not mean it needs to be exterminated.

What is your view on adders , should they be killed on sight as they are poisonous?

 

[Tom Bombadil]

One of my daughters lives in a cottage or a farm just outside Shrewsbury. She has a small / medium sized garden where she keeps 2 ducks as pets - Jemima and Florence.
When she got home on Sunday afternoon at about 4pm one was dead and the other wandering about in a dazed state with several chunks bitten out of her.
We know this was a FOX because no attempt was made to eat either duck - they were killed for fun.
Apparently there are only 3 creatures on the planet that kill for fun [not just to eat] - Cats, Humans and Foxes.
I understand why farmers supported the hunt to keep fox numbers down

Anyway, Jemima survived and is now recovering with her new step sister Pippa

What a load of bollocks. The fox was probably disturbed while it was attacking the ducks otherwise it would have buried the surplus food after it had killed both ducks and eaten it's fill.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

I like foxes, but i don't think they need extra feeding. I have a neighbour who feeds them, but its usually my dog that usually ends up scoffing the food. It's become a right pain actually - half way round the evening walk, the dog has taken to bolting off ahead in anticipation of an extra supper. By the time I've got there it has thoroughly gorged itself and happily awaiting its telling-off, in the knowledge that it has been well worth it.

The thing is though, that the neighbour in question is a lovely old chap who's lived there far longer than me and a perfect neighbour in so many other ways. Given that, I just put up with his fox-feeding antics.

 

[Wardy's twin]

Ooh, someone who puts the welfare of animals above the welfare of humankind. Cannot get dafter than that.

you can get dafter , someone who thinks that mankind has the right to do anything it wants to the planet and the creatures on it.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

There was an excellent documentary on the other week about the wide variety of wildlife in London. There was one old dear who not only fed urban foxes by lobbing food out of the window of her first floor council flat, she'd trained them to SIT! before she lobbed them the food

 

[Westdene Seagull]

What a load of bollocks. The fox was probably disturbed while it was attacking the ducks otherwise it would have buried the surplus food after it had killed both ducks and eaten it's fill.

I'm afraid it isn't bollocks. That maybe the case here with the two ducks as there was so little poultry. I've witnessed the aftermath of an attack on a farm hen house at night. Dozens killed with just two or three missing.

 

[Chicken Run]

How many children have been attacked by foxes I would hazard a guess it is a lot less than have been attacked by dogs or knocked down by cars etc.

Not blinkered at all , a fox is a wild animal and needs to be treated with caution but that does not mean it needs to be exterminated.

What is your view on adders , should they be killed on sight as they are poisonous?

I simply put it to you a blinkered view until one of yer own gets bitten that’s all, I’m genuinely sorry that you couldn’t grasp the very simple point I was trying to make.

Btw a dog kills or savages a child they are destroyed.....

 

[WATFORD zero]

I occasionally throw a bit of fat off a joint down the bottom of the garden for the foxes (and will enjoy it all the more knowing that I am winding up wellquickwoody). My cat also chases the foxes out of the garden, (as has every cat I've ever owned).

And foxes do not and have not ever 'ripped babies to pieces'.

So it seems the outrage is Foxes kill chickens. Does someone want to tell these snowflakes what bears do in woods

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I'm afraid it isn't bollocks. That maybe the case here with the two ducks as there was so little poultry. I've witnessed the aftermath of an attack on a farm hen house at night. Dozens killed with just two or three missing.

And only two or three missing for exactly the same reason. People really need to stop anthropomorphising foxes. A fox will by instinct kill as much as it can and bury/hide the excess it can't immediately consume. In the wild this is not likely to be much, but human have domesticated these woodland birds and keep them in large numbers together. The fox which gets in is just following its instincts, but now there are dozens of birds not 2 or 3. The fox isn't good or evil it's just a wild animal in a domesticated setting.

 

[The red pepper kid]

a Danish couple I know feed foxes and have them mixing with their rabbit

 

[Wardy's twin]

I simply put it to you a blinkered view until one of yer own gets bitten that’s all, I’m genuinely sorry that you couldn’t grasp the very simple point I was trying to make.

Btw a dog kills or savages a child they are destroyed.....

Not at all blinkered and no need to feel sorry that I take a rational approach to animals. If one of my children had been bitten by a fox I would have to ask myself what did I do wrong and not develop an irrational fear of all foxes.

I was bitten by a dog when I was a kid and also saw one bite the head of a kitten (it was put down) so I know dogs can be dangerous so I am very guarded when they approached my children and I monitor how they touch them. What I don't do is advocate that all dogs should be put down because one attacks a child.

You didn't answer my question about adders...