Gosh that must have been worrying for you, how did wee Benji cope?
I wonder if I should get OH to pee along the fence :lol:
That's said to be the best scenting for a rural fox in "olden times" (a young virile male).:thumb::lol:
About 18" off the ground =BIG territorial owner!!:lol:
I dread to think what your O/H will think about it. I guess he'll have to do it at night.
I had to laugh a bit about the second fox. It was a right show down as I put pee at it's front door & it put pooh at my door. I wouldn't have laughed so much if I didn't have plan b.
Poor Benjie has been a bag of nerves from the beginning after an awful start. He's a house bun but rarely came out of our bedroom where he's lots of hidey holes, including a burrow of sorts behind storage boxes under the bed. He started to get really spooked at night & I couldn't understand it. Couldn't see anything outside & he didn't spook to distant fox calls. He wouldn't eat unless I was watching or I put his food under the bed, so I got really worried until I realised what it was all about.
Bless him he'd still always dash out to use his litter tray.
Nearly all my animals have had big fear issues, so I couldn't understand why Benjie wasn't making progress.
Although there is a local fox problem there are many copses & woods nearby, & the woodsmen have been leaving dead wood on the ground to encourage the fox's normal diet. There are some large wildie warrens too.
Our local problem is that they've just built a large estate displacing mainly rural foxes into the suburbs & they haven't dispersed properly yet.
Benjie just hasn't wanted to go out until 2 weeks ago. I stay very close to him & my whole attention is on the alert, mainly for bird alarm calls. I also know that I can make a noise that sends foxes packing.
He's such a sweetie, out, rush back in, out, in, - making sure he can run fast enough to safety indoors. He pelts back in if I call him.
I'm not too sure about healthy rabbits getting heart attacks with foxes, cos if they can get to their burrows a fox won't try to dig them out.
The really nasty predators are stoats weasles & ferrets. Not only can they easily get inside warrens, but it's been well noticed that wildies peg out before they get to the burrow & die from heart attack even when saved by human intervention.
I've an impression that rabbits particularly dislike the sound of a predator close above them. If it's possible to stop anything getting on top of the hutch eg 1/2" plastic mesh overlapping the roof & about 1" above it would be a good start. A similar V shape over the flat top of the run helps.
Yes a fox can easily bite through plastic mesh but the object isn't safety it's stopping them from getting above.
Finally steel wire mesh like a 8" skirt attached to the bottom & outside the run helps to stop digging in. Obviously grass grows through it so you can't move the run.
The other big change I've noticed in Benjie is that he listens to me now. He's so desirous to please me & always responds to "A-a" but we're beginning to communicate better at last. Some of this might be due to a course of Bach flower remedy for PTS - Agrimony. Some (non rabbit) rescues swear by it.