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while getting their first exposure to Permaculture.
hey make good guardian animals if their particular skills fall within what they can do.
Can a fox catch them? Sure. Will they help with snakes? No idea.
and my Wife was standing at our Marketstall at the local Farmers Market ( got to make a living where we can) And it was a Massacre, we lost 15 in one afternoon...
And the loverly Mother was so thankful for us taking the 5 chickens she gave us 100 Kilo of chicken feed as a thank you... Wow I am really thankful for that, I can tell you. So we are back to Pen kept Hens and I have to redesign my fencing and Pens to some how make hot safe for the chicks to clean my stables and turn my Compost with out or attracting the Wolf, because I am pretty sure the Foxes can't eat all the Chickens at once, so they must be storing them some where and I bet It smells great for animals like the wolfdamaging the foxes ability to live as they are supposed to.
Even asked in our last Swiss German video for meschfencing and can go pick up a truck full tomorrow for free...
Nature is all about balance. All the foxes in Switzerland are not going to give up their fought-for turf even if you're giving away 4000 chickens twice a year to them. What will happen, is that the foxes you currently have in your area, will produce larger and more successful litters, while the "easy pickings" are available.
Tired Industrial Chickens haven't a hope of surviving a wily fox. This is no more humane than what the farmer would have done with them. Chickens raised with real moms - even foster moms - learn to watch the sky for predators, learn to take cover and stay quiet and still when the "alarm" is raised by whichever bird spots the trouble first.
There was a lady down the peninsula from my farm who was "feeding the poor hungry racoons". Eventually, enough neighbors complained that she quit - cold turkey! Bad move... Those racoon spread out into exiting territories putting pressure on the resident racoons. It spread out like ripples in a pond, with desperate coons challenging every small flock owner on the peninsula. We often go 2 to 3 years without coon losses. We ended up having to kill far more than I would have preferred to get us back to, "leave that farm alone status." I *know* we've got coon on our land, in the same areas as we have chickens. We see their prints and their scat. I don't know exactly what they are eating, but it's *not* my garbage (we make sure of that!) and it's *not* my birds. I've heard they will eat rats - power to them if they will!
But I wanted to comment on the rescue chickens:
Maybe you want to reconsider taking in all those chickens. Talking from the experience from above mentioned friend, you more or less only take them in to die. Most are too exhausted to lay eggs or really get into good health again.
You are relieving the conscience of the battery breeder and helping - involuntarily - to keep this vicious cycle in place. He is happy he does not have to deal with the costly and nasty part of slaughtering and just will keep ordering new stock and dump the old ones to you.
So the direct action might seem ethical, but the overall impact keeps an in ethical system up and running.
To add to Jay's post: in addition to increasing the fox population in your area by feeding them unprotected chickens, you will also teach the foxes that eating chicken is good and safe.
More foxes, trained in chicken hunting: The neighbors might resent that, especially after loosing their chicken which may be more valuable to them (breeding stock of rare breeds for example). You can ask a hunter to take care of your problem fox, you will probably make more friends that way.
Anne Miller wrote:Have you considered trying to catch the fox in a cage?
What about getting a dog?
