Air And Ground Attack!

Mother Nature gave us a break last year but this year the hungry army of predators came after my chickens like a swarm of angry wasps, rodents skulking in the night, owls leaving their calling cards like the legend of sleepy hallow.  Then the self confident and tenacious red fox began it’s onslaught killing four more unsuspecting favorites of mine. This was war indeed!

My creative engineering husband and I thought we covered it all! We attached a wire grid in the center of the free range chicken area to prevent any airborne predators to dive in from above. We buried the perimeter fence a foot deep in the soil and attached a wire hook plunged into the ground and re-bar stakes to prevent any diggers from outside getting in. For a good solid two years there was no harm to the chickens. We did it! So we thought, boy we were wrong, just when we thought we covered it all a surprise was waiting for us.

One morning not long ago, we discovered one of the hens missing. How the heck does a chicken just go missing? There was no evidence of an attack, and no clues to give us a lead. My husband and I thought that maybe the hen walked or perhaps flew out of the fenced yard with curiosity when we left a gate open momentarily and not realizing it. How could we have missed it? I asked myself puzzled by its disappearance. We both concluded that the chicken was no longer on the property and we knew the chicken was long gone, probably wondering around with curiosity in the wilderness.

A couple weeks went by and another chicken disappeared, this time the invader left a trail of feathers. “What the…..?” A dozen questions raced through my mind. “Was the chicken attacked? What animal takes the prey with them?” I started naming some of the predators in the area. “Was it a hawk? Nah, it would have got trapped in the wire…. right? Could it have been one of the local domestic cats? No way, our neighbors cats and my cat are afraid of the chickens. Then what could it have been?”

On a warm pleasant spring evening, the answer to our riddle was discovered. My husband and I was watching a movie in our living room. Our back patio screen door was open. Midnight the cat and Daisy the rabbit were acting a little strange. Daisy quickly hopped towards the gas stove and hid underneath it. Daisy hopped so fast as if she had challenged a race with Midnight. Midnight followed behind Daisy and hid behind the sofa next to the gas stove.

At that moment a medium size dog like creature came in view. Our eyes refocused from the movie to the dog like creature on our back patio deck realizing with a gasp of air that it was a red fox. Oh what a beauty he was, it had a shiny reddish coat that is white underneath and a big bushy tail with a white tip . For what ever reason, we didn’t move, we sat there still as statues on our couch watching the fox as if someone had grabbed the remote suddenly and changed the channel. It was sniffing around until one of the animals in the chicken area caught his attention.

Once I noticed the fox’s demeanor change from scouting to a hunting mode and realizing that this is not an episode on the nature channel, I ran outside through the garage to make an attempt to cut him off. Putting myself between him and the chickens.

Rushing out the garage door furious with a pair of socks on, no shoes mind you, yelling “Where is it honey? Where is it?” Once the fox was in view, literally five steps away staring face to face what seemed like a whole minute but in reality a few seconds. During those long minute like seconds, I realized at that moment that this fearless fox, this confident clever Fox, is responsible for the missing chickens. The fearless Fox stared back boldly as of he was sizing me up, establishing whether I was a friendly or a threat, or maybe a strange human making loud and strange noises. I don’t know what the Fox was thinking because he did not act afraid of me! That my friend did not sit well with me!

I looked around and picked up a piece of 10′ PVC pipe and chased that invader back into the wilderness. All of that effort just to find another Fox the next morning in a standoff with Midnight the cat. It was high noon at the OK Corral. Midnight was debating flight or fight, but stood her ground. With a stare down of death in both of the warriors eyes, I sprang to the defense and repelled Mr. Fox back through the fence once again. Yes, you read it right, through the fence not over the fence but through the 4×4 wire opening. When I returned to my brave cat, that had positioned herself between Mr. Fox and the chickens, I picked her up noticing she had wet herself. Midnight was scared, but she was brave.

Mr. fox had slaughtered four out of ten chickens thus far. At this point in time I was determined to keep this fox out of the property. After doing some research, our first step was to be outside during hunting hours, hoping this would discourage the fox until we can install a 2×4 inch opening wire fence.

Entice the chickens with dried meal worms to get them in the coop early (between4-5pm instead of 7-8pm).

Weeks and months went by and no sign of the fox.

My husband and I have been outside attending to the property most of the day. We went inside the house to cool off from the three digit heat and to prepare dinner. When we finished dinner we went outside to give the chickens our veggie scraps. Yeah, these chickens are spoiled, not only do they get dried meal worm treats, which is like candy to them, they also get to eat our organic kitchen scraps, weeds from the organic garden, and a custom homemade organic wholegrain chicken feed. Did I mentioned that I spoil my chickens?

Once I stepped outside, I could hear one of my hens clucking as loud as it can. I couldn’t understand why she was being so vocal, because I didn’t see any threat around. So I started calling for the rest of my hens. I’ve trained the chickens to come when I call out “coop, coop, coop”. The hens know that this call means, it’s treat time.

When I called out hoping to find all 6 hens running towards me with excitement, only one had approached me. The one chicken that was making all the noise, Cleopatra was still clucking away, as if she was yelling at me in a foreign language. At that moment I knew something wasn’t quite right.

I started looking around for the other 5 chickens. As I was walking towards the bottom of the property I found one of the hens body motionless, Oreo. Instinctively I immediately looked beyond the property line. My husband pointed out the direction to where the fox was in sight, trotting away without a meal. The overwhelming of fear and urgency is flooding my emotions. At this point I continued to call for my chickens, in hopes that this was only a game of hide and seek and that they would all come out of there hiding places. Then another motionless chicken Phoenix, came in view. I dropped to my knees as tears dropped from my sadden eyes. Then another motionless chicken, Star came in view. The thought of all five chickens slaughtered was almost unbearable to consider.

I walked towards the chicken coop, hoping to find the remaining two hens alive and well. I stuck my head through the opening, and found the oldest and probably the wisest hen roosting, Cleopatra. I continued the search for my missing polish bantam.

Mojito came in view, perched on the top of a trash can lid. With a sigh of relief, I picked her up and carried her as if she was a baby in my arms and gently placed her in the coop. After making sure that the remaining two chickens were safe, and protected in the coop, it was time to clean up the mess. I couldn’t do it. Their bodies were still warm and I was traumatized by how quickly it all happen while we were in the house preparing dinner. My husband was in charge of cleaning the mess, bless his heart. As soon as he returned from the house with a trash bag, the marauding fox had returned. He was starring at one of the dead chickens, licking its lips, drooling at a potential meal lost. It’s a good thing we put the remaining hens in the coop because he was coming back for them too.

We initially started this year with 10 chickens, and now we are down to two.

Our next step is to install an electric fence. Is this worth all the time and energy we’ve put into protecting our chickens? If the electric fence fails to do the job, then I have no choice but to limit the amount of free range and extend the chicken run.

Time will tell. New chicks will be arriving soon.