Fox taming experiment

[tdierikx]

On 12/6/2017 at 9:08 AM, persephone said:

wow!!!
that is being very familiar

I don't mind the ravens too much... I've watched them hunting rats too... *grin*

 

Sitting bottle feeding the baby goats one afternoon, I saw a flurry of activity near the back of the shed, and it was a raven sticking it's head down a rat hole... it came up with a rat and proceeded to smash it about then tear it up and eat it... good raven!

 

Not as fussed on the buggers stealing golf balls from the local range and dropping them from above me... or when they've gotten bread from somewhere local and dunked it into the paddock waterers, clogging them up so I have to clean them every day... grrr! I've found numerous interesting items jammed in the waterers too - golf balls, rubber ducks, toy cars...

 

As for the foxes - I'm keeping an eye on our smaller paddock goats at the moment, as they are still small enough to be targets... hopefully the foxes will stick to the myriad bunnies for a while longer... *sigh*

 

T.

[gillybob]

Port Kembla Golf course used to have a big wireless tower near the bottom of the course, It had a really big old nest that Ravens had built, they used to go after golf balls all the time.

I was an adult when I first saw a live Wedgetail,up in the Snowies the only ones I ever saw were stretched out on fences. The first live ones I saw were near Wauhope one day. I have always thought of them as my bird. When I used to travel on the train to Sydney and back, I always new I was near home because I saw a Wedgetail up in the valley between Armidale and Tamworth. I had a pair that nested on the property I lived on. I watched them raise many babies and got to see the youngsters learn to hunt and ride the thermals. The most wonderful thing for me was lieing on a rock watching them ride up the air. The day before I left that place I was doing just that sort of saying good by and one dropped a feather for me!

Edited December 8, 2017 by gillybob

[tdierikx]

We get some raptors over the farm... mainly the smaller types like goshawks and kestrels, but I've seen one or two wedgies... funniest sight the other day was the poor kestrel getting nailed by the territorial willy wagtails we have in residence at the moment... they take on the ravens also... lol! The willies ALWAYS win and drive off the bigger birds too! Won't be long before the resident shed willies take to swooping us as we try to work...

 

Whilst I love seeing the wedgies, I get our baby goats inside pretty quickly if one is about... errr!

 

I had a little superb fairy wren manage to get inside my car the other day while he was attacking my side mirrors (the car was parked)... luckily I noticed him before I got in and drove off!

 

AND we have sparrows at work! Been years since I've seen sparrows in any numbers anywhere... they and the willies keep the spider population down in the shed, so they are VERY welcome!

 

T.

[persephone]

9 hours ago, tdierikx said:

funniest sight the other day was the poor kestrel getting nailed by the territorial willy wagtails we have in residence at the moment... they take on the ravens also.

Yes! I have old photos somewhere of a willywag keeping a whistling kite off a raw chopbone I threw out!!The kite had no hope .

[PANDI-GIRL]

Nesting birds are very territorial,  we have  Willywagtails   &  Crows  nesting at the moment, they chase each other a lot.

Edited December 12, 2017 by PANDI-GIRL

[tdierikx]

At least the willy wagtails can't steal the eggs from under the chooks and ducks like the ravens do... errr!

 

As long as the ravens stick to getting rats, they are welcome - but please stop dropping bunny bits near my head... grrr! Or said eggs!

 

I love watching the superb fairy wrens doing their little mating dances - not as fussed washing off the poop from my car side mirrors though... *grin*... and the little bugger is too flighty to get a decent photo opportunity of him doing over my mirrors...

 

Love watching the sparrows hover, then nip in for a tasty spider or other bug...

 

T.

[WoofnHoof]

On 01/12/2017 at 6:33 PM, sandgrubber said:

I went through a phase of being fascinated with Belayev's experiments.  The memory and question that lingers relates to degrees of domestication.  As I remember, Belayev started out with levels of domestication: A,B,C...etc. and ended up having to add AA and(?) AAA because his foxes kept getting tamer and tamer.  The question is whether some breeds of dogs are more domesticated than others...due to more intense selection for ability to live in close contact with humans.

 

It is fascinating stuff for sure. Being a husky owner I've read a few studies and huskies and a few other breeds are considered part of a subgroup known as "primitive breeds", which while genetically I think there is not enough variation to separate them from a behavioural perspective they exhibit behaviours which are thought to most closely resemble those of the ancestral gray wolf. One study in fact linked this with morphological characteristics believed to be associated with neoteny, in which juvenile behaviours are retained in the adult and is thought to be one of the key indicators of domestication. So in short the less the dog looks like a wolf, the less it's behaviour resembles the adult wolf, and this is thought to be indicative of the relative "extent" (for want of a better word) of the domestication process which has occurred. 

 

 

On 05/12/2017 at 8:54 PM, tdierikx said:

A really dumb fox would still make the smartest Border Collie look like a dunce... they are super smart... and have memories like elephants to boot!

 

For all the things we don't really like about foxes here in Australia, you still have to admire their adaptability and tenacity to survive and thrive - no matter what we stupid humans do to try to stop them... *grin*

 

Saw my first evidence of fox activity at my work farm in ages yesterday... a bit of bunny fluff scattered near a fence. Good thing too, as the bloody bunnies have been getting so thick on the ground that they have been wandering up to the cattle/goat/sheep feed troughs and feeding happily alongside our animals for weeks now...

 

Even the ravens have been poaching small bunnies at the farm lately... but I wish they'd stop dropping bits of bunny from the sky... I nearly ended up with a bunny leg hat the other day! Seriously, the portion landed less than 6 inches from me! Still hasn't stopped them going into the duck pen and stealing the eggs though...

 

T.

 

We have heaps of rabbits around this year and I suspect the problem has largely been contributed to by "helpful" neighbours shooting foxes, personally I don't mind foxes they keep the rabbit population under control. Funnily enough the sheep farmers in my area don't agree but IMO they should be using LGDs anyway then we could have more foxes, less rabbits and not lose lambs in the process.

[m-j]

I just wonder how much damage foxes actually do. One time I saw a fox go through a mob of sheep and lambs, not one moved, the vast majority didnt even raise their heads, if that fox had been a dog it would have been a very different scenario.

[DogsAndTheMob]

Foxes can do a lot of damage very quietly. My parents’ chook shed had a wire-meshed window, and the hens roosted on the sill of this window, over 4 foot above the ground. One night a hen jumped onto the outside of the sill, ran along it, grabbed the hens through the mesh, and killed them. The fox must have acted with quiet efficiency to kill each hen without alarming the next one (and also without waking our German shepherds). I think a dog would have created much more chaos, which would have alerted the hens and given them a chance to escape.

 

Despite that, I do think foxes are beautiful animals and it always feels like a special experience when I see one. 

[m-j]

Yes I have had my chooks killed by foxes and as you said very quietly without alerting my dogs until I reinforced their pen. I know they do damage to stock lambs in particular but are they as bad as they are made out to be, feral dogs would be a bigger issue and they seem to be spreading their habitats, either that or people are just more careless. After talking to a dogger I wouldnt completely dismiss that thought, sadly.

[tdierikx]

Foxes are opportunistic hunters... if they are hungry, they will kill whatever is at hand - even killing more than they can eat, and leaving some to come back to later. They are not fussy as to whether food is fresh or rotting... it's all food to a wild fox.

 

That said, their preferred dinner is rabbit... if rabbits are thin on the ground, then the foxes will go for the next best thing - rodents, chickens or slow livestock, and native wildlife.

 

A chicken coop looks like a smorgasbord to a fox... all that food in the one spot... very appealing to the lazier hunters or those needing to take food back to babies in the den.

 

Peak times for unwanted fox activity should be during winter (June-August) when the males are all roaming to find females to mate (you'll even see more daylight attacks), and again around October-December when the kits are old enough to eat solids, but not old enough to hunt themselves.

 

Foxes have a pretty high bite pressure for their size... more than the average dog... which means they can kill very quickly with one bite... especially smaller prey like chickens and rabbits.

 

T.

[gillybob]

I have a friend who has lived on three properties, one 5 ks from town, one 30ks and one 45ks.

The place closer to town was where she lost a lot of her chickens, especially spring/summer when there would be parents and youngsters in her coop, they killed every hen.

The second place she had a fort Knox of a coop, but the Quolls chewed their way through the wire. Even with the wire dug in a metre or two. Quolls just don't care. They will pull the chooks through the wire!

Her new place is pretty isolated, she stopped with the chooks after trying again and loosing them to foxes.

[PossumCorner]

That's a common long-term experience - I know a few chook owners who have given up keeping them, just totally disheartened after so much effort to fox-proof and still losing a pen-full overnight.  Foxes have caused havoc even in commercial poultry hatcheries where every resource of money and paid staff has had a fail moment with a tennis-ball sized gap between steel framework.  For myself, I have very conservatively lost $1500 worth of chickens, ducks and/or geese over six years.  And constantly poured more planning, time and effort (not to mention money) into keeping poultry in a humane way with enough room to move not in "approved" legal minimum free range prisons.  Bought alpacas for guardian work, strategically designed alpaca fencing to surround the Fort Knox poultry pens, geese for daylight warning.  All that.  And still have fox problems.  Don't know anyone who keeps poultry in fox-rich country who does not.  (Alpacas are brilliant but not fail-safe).

 

Edit to add: I still can't cope with people who rant on about how much they hate foxes.  How stupid.  We set sheep and poultry up for failure, foxes only do what foxes do.  Just wonder sometimes how these fox haters would cope if they had to contend with leopards taking their pet dogs, or had other large predators to worry about.  Indians don't bat on about "I hate leopards" or the Polish "I hate bears" or lynxes or whatever.  

 

   

Edited January 7, 2018 by PossumCorner
anti-rant rant.

[DogsAndTheMob]

10 minutes ago, PossumCorner said:

I still can't cope with people who rant on about how much they hate foxes.  How stupid.  We set sheep and poultry up for failure, foxes only do what foxes do.  Just wonder sometimes how these fox haters would cope if they had to contend with leopards taking their pet dogs, or had other large predators to worry about.  Indians don't bat on about "I hate leopards" or the Polish "I hate bears" or lynxes or whatever.  

 

   

I think too many people love having someone/something to hate.

[Tempus Fugit]

Well, in Russia up until very recently there was still a lot of live baiting of 'pest' species going on. You could take your dog to a 'baiting station' where for a fee you could have your husky bait a chained bear or have your terrier chase a fox around an artificial sett. Some US states had a similar practice known as coyote and fox pens.

53 minutes ago, DogsAndTheMob said:

I think too many people love having someone/something to hate.

My biggest hassle with foxes is that my dog loves to chase them, which can be problematic as my local unfenced off-lead exercise is bounded by busy roads. They also tend to pop up when I am doing tracking training.

 

Here is what one person in the US uses to stop coyotes taking his pet dog:

[WoofnHoof]

9 hours ago, PossumCorner said:

That's a common long-term experience - I know a few chook owners who have given up keeping them, just totally disheartened after so much effort to fox-proof and still losing a pen-full overnight.  Foxes have caused havoc even in commercial poultry hatcheries where every resource of money and paid staff has had a fail moment with a tennis-ball sized gap between steel framework.  For myself, I have very conservatively lost $1500 worth of chickens, ducks and/or geese over six years.  And constantly poured more planning, time and effort (not to mention money) into keeping poultry in a humane way with enough room to move not in "approved" legal minimum free range prisons.  Bought alpacas for guardian work, strategically designed alpaca fencing to surround the Fort Knox poultry pens, geese for daylight warning.  All that.  And still have fox problems.  Don't know anyone who keeps poultry in fox-rich country who does not.  (Alpacas are brilliant but not fail-safe).

 

Edit to add: I still can't cope with people who rant on about how much they hate foxes.  How stupid.  We set sheep and poultry up for failure, foxes only do what foxes do.  Just wonder sometimes how these fox haters would cope if they had to contend with leopards taking their pet dogs, or had other large predators to worry about.  Indians don't bat on about "I hate leopards" or the Polish "I hate bears" or lynxes or whatever.  

 

   

 

When I was in Qld I lived up the road from a free range egg farm, they had a couple of mareemas looking after the chooks, seemed to work well. They sold up a few years later but I don't think that had anything to do with predators just property prices in the area going up. 

 

Yes it's very frustrating when people have prey animals, don't do anything to protect them, then scream blue murder when they get eaten. Lots of sheep farmers around here but trying to talk to them about LGDs is like pulling teeth, they don't want to know they want a magic solution to the predator problem that doesn't cost them any time, money or effort. Alpacas are attractive from an ease of management point of view but they aren't bred for guarding so their effectiveness is very hit and miss. Ditto for donkeys. 

[persephone]

The poultry forum I'm on is so sad - folks get chookies for the kids, or as a 'backyard garden/farm'  in an inner suburb ..and the foxes will destroy their poor birds!! Honestly, until I started reading all that news, I had NO idea just how bad  cities have it, with regard to foxes! I knew they were around ..but not either as many, or as unconcerned by  human  stuff ! Foxes coming into backyards in broad daylight ..foxes chewing the wood on those laying boxes one can pull out to access eggs ...then climbing in the opening ..foxes happily munching their way thru various gauges of wire ...then there are cats, of course ....  
I have a photo , somewhere , of a dead feral cat - arranged alongside the chooks it killed ..my gorgeous  Plymouth Barred Rock pullets ..it was at night..and this cat just grabbed necks, and drank blood ...
Feral cats climbed 30 ft up a silky oak tree and ate my last 6 guineafowl ...
One of my pet goats was a newborn  rescued by a neighbour from the jaws of a large feral tomcat ....thank goodness they don't grow that large in cities!!
Keeping poultry in a backyard these days   now involves something like this ! metal, electrics - (with floor) ! ( image from a US site ) 


I am thankful many years ago as a city dweller to have had my ducks in my backyard ..just locked in a quack-proof crate at night . Oh ..and I had the odd dog or two ;)