We have this chicken called Freddie, s/he is big and extremely noisy.
Last night at about 1am Ady woke me to tell me there was a fox circling the chicken run – he’d heard a big commotion out there and looked out the window to see it there pacing up and down but couldn’t find anything to put on to go there (‘local man involved in tragedy photo controversy arrested for indecent exposure involving poultry – read all about it!’). By the time he’d dragged a dressing gown on and got outside there had been squawking and thudding and Freddie was lying on it’s back softly clucking round the side while the fox went back for the next one.
Ady and the fox eyed each other up before the fox ran straight into a bit of fence (very dented upon inspection this morning) before managing to scramble up a wall and escape. Ady picked Freddie up, fully expecting him/her to be very mauled and at death’s door and brought it inside. I’d arrived downstairs by this time (although without contact lenses so could only really make out a lump of feathers) but after some stroking and a bit of an inspection up Freddie hopped, clucked a bit, wandered round the lounge looking like it remembered being there but had always pictured it as much larger 😆 before Ady decided it should probably go back out to it’s coop again.
He had a quick look around the garden incase more had been dragged out of the coop already but none were apparent so we went back to bed. This morning they are all present and correct and Freddie seems fine. We’ll do a bit more fox proofing to the run today as I imagine the fox will be back again. It’s all go here.
How “fox proof” is the coop? He obviously found a pretty quick way in – how do you reckon he did it?
well not very, we’ve been a bit slack with it. The original design was our run tacked onto the ark house I built but we’ve extended it with a freecycled hutch (god our garden looks like a junk yard since we got these chickens!) which is just pushed up to another hole at the other end of the chicken wire run. It is very light (the kids can move it easily) and the fox just shoved his nose in and moved the hutch with his body weight.
We’ll wedge the hutch up tonight with something weighted which should sort it hopefully.