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Foxes

B

beki

Mama Doe
I have just seen a fox in my garden!
We know they roam the nearby streets and last year they attacked and killed one of my cats!
I have never ever seen them in my garden. It is not a cut through, we back on to a school with very high fences and are basically a dead end. My neighbour has been building next door and taken the fences down, replacing them with some metal fencing until he is ready to put new fences up. Luckily since he did that I no longer let the rabbits free roam in the garden as he has a terrier and I’m worried about the terrier getting through. I also now have a puppy who despite all training just cannot calm down when he is near the rabbits, so they get playtime in a heavy wooden run that we weigh down with bricks.
We put the rabbits back 20 minutes before we spotted the fox! It was small, not much bigger than a large cat, so it was young I think. The puppy ran after it barking. My husband is now blocking off all round our shed as it ran behind there. We think it might have squeezed through a small gap into the neighbours garden.

Argh!! Does anyone know how to deter them?

The puppy chased it off!

Hutch is really secure with a catch and a bolt on each door. It’s also really thick wood with strong weld mesh, so I’m pretty confident the bunnies are safe. We also cover them over when it gets dark so they don’t get spooked (they are not at all bothered by noises - puppy barks at them when they are in their run and they just stare him straight in the eye and carry on eating - I do tell the puppy off when he barks at them)
 
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The only thing that has a chance of deterring a Fox is electric fencing

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Urban Foxes are very bold. They WILL enter houses. I have lost a House Rabbit to a Fox. The Fox entered my house via a kitchen window. I now NEVER leave a downstairs window open unless I am in the room the whole time.
 
Hummm im not sure ill get away with electric fencing sharing a boarder with a school.

The fox tried to come back into the garden. We think we have have worked out which part of our neighbours garden it’s using to get to ours. My husband and the puppy scared it off by running down the garden after it.

I’ve been telling my husband for weeks that some of the poos I’ve been picking up in the garden definitely don’t belong to the dog, they are the wrong size and colour.
I thought it might have been a cat, but I haven’t seen a cat in our garden since we got the puppy and my cat has decided to become a house cat so it isn’t her. They must have been fox poos!

I would never have thought a fox would enter a house. Your poor bunny.
You expect the house to be the safest place, it must have been awful for you :(

I’ve blocked the bunnies hutch so they only have access to the upstairs part tonight and not the downstairs as they like to sit at the bottom pushed against the wire. I’ve tucked a tarpaulin in all the way round
 
beki said:
Hummm im not sure ill get away with electric fencing sharing a boarder with a school.

The fox tried to come back into the garden. We think we have have worked out which part of our neighbours garden it’s using to get to ours. My husband and the puppy scared it off by running down the garden after it.

I’ve been telling my husband for weeks that some of the poos I’ve been picking up in the garden definitely don’t belong to the dog, they are the wrong size and colour.
I thought it might have been a cat, but I haven’t seen a cat in our garden since we got the puppy and my cat has decided to become a house cat so it isn’t her. They must have been fox poos!

I would never have thought a fox would enter a house. Your poor bunny.
You expect the house to be the safest place, it must have been awful for you :(

I’ve blocked the bunnies hutch so they only have access to the upstairs part tonight and not the downstairs as they like to sit at the bottom pushed against the wire. I’ve tucked a tarpaulin in all the way round
Click to expand...
Once a Fox knows that there are Rabbits about the Fox will keep coming back. They can do so in daylight hours as well as at night.

They can easily chew and claw through tarpaulin ☹️ Ordinary wire on Rabbit hutches is seldom Fox proof. Foxes can and will undo latches and bolts. Padlocks are essential.

Photos of fox attack on rabbit accommodation (rabbits are fine, fortunately!)

First, I should probably point out that both bunnies are unharmed (phew!)and are now safely installed in the house while I work out what to do next. But it could have been so very different - so many lessons learnt in one day! I went to work as normal and arrived home to find that the rabbit's...
forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk

Foxes will dig under accommodation in an attempt to get in. So the ground the accommodation is sited on needs to be concrete or have heavy gauge mesh down to prevent the Fox from being able to dig.

I know you say you can’t have indoor Rabbits because you now have a Puppy, but could you not have a room that the Puppy would not be permitted to enter where the Rabbits can live until you can upgrade their outdoor set up to make it much more secure.
Suggestions of what would be needed here

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I agree with all the advice and warnings that have been given. Foxes are really persistent.

Our experience, which is rural, is similar. We have had one chicken lost and one who, after being carried a distance in the fox's mouth, was dropped and amazingly survived. During one of those daytime attacks, the fox returned and attempted to recapture the chicken, while we were standing about 5 feet away from her.

There is, in my view, no deterent apart from preventing access completely. We now have an outdoor camera set up, which monitors fox activity in the garden. 90% of the time at least one fox will be seen entering the garden. They mostly come during the hours of darkness, but they do also appear during the day, even when one or other of us is in the garden.

This time of the year they will have young and so the pressure for food for the family will be greater, which of course makes them more desperate and more likely to take chances.

There is also an additional problem with bunnies (our bunnies live outside) in that even where the fox cannot access and physically harm the bunnies, the stress of a fox trying to get to them will be enough to cause a fatality.
 
The hutch with run is on concrete so that’s ok. The separate run is on grass. The hutch and run are in full view of my French doors so if a fox comes in the garden in daylight one of us will see it.

I’m pretty confident on the security of the accommodation as it’s not shop bought. I bought it from a local company who makes hutches and runs to spec and as Bertie is a chewer I asked for extra thick wood and decent weld mesh as he has chewed himself out of 2 hutches previously but this is still going strong. I’ll get a few padlocks though for extra security. The hutch is also about 5 foot away from my back door so any noise from foxes and the puppy will start to bark as he sleeps in the room looking on to the back garden overnight.

Indoor really isn’t a possibility as if I did they would be confined to a very small space and locked in, at best, a puppy crate (1 dog, 1 cat, 2 kids means a lot of the living area is used up. The kids also can’t be trusted to keep the dog out of rooms and close doors! He has chewed so many things!). I could possibly keep them in at night only, but confined to a crate? I know you have said about foxes and day time but the risk at night is higher. We are on the edge of the suburbs and have large areas of land nearby where they could be living so areas I suspect easier to hunt in during day time without a noisy primary school they need to pass through.
 
The tarpaulin was really so that if the fox came back the rabbits couldn’t see it. They are not at all bothered by any sort of loud noises (neighbour had a mini digger 2 feet from their hutch early one morning before we could move them. They carried on sleeping! Similar when he started to fill his foundations with concrete!) so the tarp was really so they couldn’t be startled by a fox
 
I guess all you can do is try to make their accommodation outside as secure as possible.

My theory is that if accommodation is not safe at night then it’s not safe in daylight either. As I have said, urban foxes really have very little fear. Here they are far bolder than the local cats. They will sit in the garden when I open the door and just stare. The cats scarper as soon as they here a door open.

Do you have a cat flap ? If so and it isn’t one that needs to be triggered by a collar worn by your cat in order to open then Foxes will find their way in via that if they chose to do so.

I realise I probably seem OTT about my concerns re Foxes. But after seeing for myself the results of what happens if a Cat gets a Rabbit I wouldn’t wish the horrors of that sight on anyone 😭 The fact that it happened in my house made it worse 😭
 
InspectorMorse said:
I guess all you can do is try to make their accommodation outside as secure as possible.

My theory is that if accommodation is not safe at night then it’s not safe in daylight either. As I have said, urban foxes really have very little fear. Here they are far bolder than the local cats. They will sit in the garden when I open the door and just stare. The cats scarper as soon as they here a door open.

Do you have a cat flap ? If so and it isn’t one that needs to be triggered by a collar worn by your cat in order to open then Foxes will find their way in via that if they chose to do so.

I realise I probably seem OTT about my concerns re Foxes. But after seeing for myself the results of what happens if a Cat gets a Rabbit I wouldn’t wish the horrors of that sight on anyone 😭 The fact that it happened in my house made it worse 😭
Click to expand...
No no not OTT, perfectly understandable about what happened to your poor rabbit. I think I’d be exactly the same if one came into my house.

The one last night was not bold at all. It squealed when my husband ran down the garden to chase it off. I have seen some much bolder ones sitting by the side of the main road about a mile from my house though, where the houses are more built up.

No we dont have a cat flap. We had one at our old house and Chloe cat was a nervous wreck as all the local cats used to peer in at her. It was a microchip activated one. She used to pee on the carpets in response so when we moved house we didn’t get one.
She stopped peeing on the floor when we moved as she was much calmer without a flap.
 
There are a lot of foxes around here. Some are huge (and my dogs are v tall, so most things seem quite small to me). They are now out by 8.30pm - it used to be around midnight. They just sit and watch if I'm out with the dogs - totally unfazed while the dogs go nuts. I've seen them clear my 6' fencing with no problems. They can / will also dig. I've seen what foxes will do to anything they catch - and it's certainly not just for food. Don't trust them at all. Having tall fences and 3 big dogs in the garden does seem to keep them out, as far as I can tell - but they go next door, they sit on the nearby green and they walk past my gate regularly.
 
Yeah, never underestimate a predator or get complacent. Make sure the accommodation is fox proof and if you ever have them out of that accommodation, be very careful since foxes can be so bold.

A few weeks ago I had a raccoon almost get into my bedroom because it heard my duckling peeping. I've never had that happen before (that I'm aware of). I was in another part of the house for maybe 20 minutes, then I go back in my bedroom where I had my window open.

My window has a screen on it to prevent mosquitoes, snakes, etc, from getting in, but it's thin screen that even a cat could rip through accidentally. I needed to go take care of the pets before bed, but I had coffee on the windowsill that I wanted to take a sip of first. That's when I noticed something outside under my window. I figured it was a cat, but I leaned down to look, and the animal stood up and leaned up towards me as I did so. I ended up face to face with a raccoon. And this was after the raccoon must've heard me talking to my pets, stirring my coffee, etc. It wasn't afraid of hearing or seeing me.

I shudder to think what would've happened if I hadn't gone in my room then, or if I hadn't decided to stand in front of the window stirring and sipping my coffee. Not only did I have a duckling a few feet from the window, but also my adult ducks who would've been easily killed.
 
I'm in a rural area, a side valley with woods very close. There are foxes, but they mostly keep away. It's not like in more urban environments where they get used to people. I had one daytime attack in 2015 though, managed to get between it and the rabbit but he died of shock hours later.

I had some encounters since, a wildlife camera is a Must Have as an early warning system. They are careful, and smart, they get closer gradually, exploring, you'll never notice without the camera. Mostly it was young foxes exploring, those I was able to disencourage with different contraptions like a motion sensor hooked up to a power tool in a metal bucket, or a 4m high "flyswatter" that fell with a lot of noise and action when they ran into the tripwire. Mostly it was me who ran into that trap, forgot where the wire is..., harmless traps since have neighbours cats around too.
Two persistent ones I trapped inside the fenced hutch area, let the door open and set a trigger that closed the springlaoded door and set off the alarm, nothing better to instill fear in a wild animal than trapping it, never seen one of those ever again, I hope they now think that getting close to rabbits is dangerous..
One old, completly mangy fox I could not deter, he got some young rabbits while I was away in the US, I set up an alarm system and shot it when it returned some weeks later.

Marten are around too, one set up camp in my barn. But I never had a problem with them, it is said that they don't hunt where they live, and if I would kill the one that lives here others would take the territory and more likely would cause problems, so, it's kind of a ceasefire.

My rabbits have access to outside during daytime, but are locked in house/hutches at dusk. Not entirely safe, but a compromise between quality of life and safety.
 
Preitler said:
I'm in a rural area, a side valley with woods very close. There are foxes, but they mostly keep away. It's not like in more urban environments where they get used to people. I had one daytime attack in 2015 though, managed to get between it and the rabbit but he died of shock hours later.

I had some encounters since, a wildlife camera is a Must Have as an early warning system. They are careful, and smart, they get closer gradually, exploring, you'll never notice without the camera. Mostly it was young foxes exploring, those I was able to disencourage with different contraptions like a motion sensor hooked up to a power tool in a metal bucket, or a 4m high "flyswatter" that fell with a lot of noise and action when they ran into the tripwire. Mostly it was me who ran into that trap, forgot where the wire is..., harmless traps since have neighbours cats around too.
Two persistent ones I trapped inside the fenced hutch area, let the door open and set a trigger that closed the springlaoded door and set off the alarm, nothing better to instill fear in a wild animal than trapping it, never seen one of those ever again, I hope they now think that getting close to rabbits is dangerous..
One old, completly mangy fox I could not deter, he got some young rabbits while I was away in the US, I set up an alarm system and shot it when it returned some weeks later.

Marten are around too, one set up camp in my barn. But I never had a problem with them, it is said that they don't hunt where they live, and if I would kill the one that lives here others would take the territory and more likely would cause problems, so, it's kind of a ceasefire.

My rabbits have access to outside during daytime, but are locked in house/hutches at dusk. Not entirely safe, but a compromise between quality of life and safety.
Click to expand...
We have sent traps too. Similar to what you have suggested, we balanced canes and a rake on possible entry points that would fall down and make a noise if disturbed.
No signs since but I think I need a camera outside.

We have always done similar. Rabbits out in the day, locked in at dusk. Last summer they were free range in the garden, but since my neighbours building work started they haven’t been able to be free range since November. He is going to get a fence up in a couple of weeks so they could be free range again but I don’t know if I dare risk it now :(
 
I saw a fox a few doors down at 10.30am today...which is somewhat worrying, along with the giant rats that seem to be flitting between gardens and are currently tunelling under my bunny runs. The foxes always used to be out around midnight. Now I've seen them at 8.30pm so have been putting my small furries to bed earlier. They have also taken to following me when I take the dogs out on an evening - which causes a lot of problems. It's really not fun to have 3 large lurchers being wound up by a fox a few feet behind.
 
We also have a camera set up to monitor the road outside at the front of the property. It's prime purpose is to observe any predators of the human kind, but of course it also monitors animals, who pass by. I would say in the past month there has definitely been an increase in the number of foxes, who are just around outside at night. And by night, I mean the time after which the human and vehicle traffic stops. And at this time of the year, yes, that can be as early as 8.30pm. Key thing is that, without the camera, I would not be aware of them at all most of the time.
 
Our experience here is the same as that outlined in the rescue's article. We have had experience of ALL of the possible predators mentioned. We too have learnt to respect the alarm calls of the Corvids, who sit in the trees around the edge of the property. They are always 100% accurate in identifying danger. We have never allowed our rabbits to free roam, but learnt the hard way, like the rescue, with the loss of a well-loved chicken to a fox during daylight.
 
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