PossumCorner

WT - possibly in SA but and we are in Vic and whether it comes under local or federal legislation or falls down a crack like so many things, Councils in Vic do not do that, nor do their employed Rangers. Nor do vets. It is up to the catcher of the fox to arrange despatch. If the local Council are helpful that is a plus but not a given.

Also, Persephone is probably the one to ask (says she who does not know how to tag names) with probably more experience than the rest of us with fox management issues.

For sure ring and ask your vet, but I have never heard of one chancing it, wild strong animal, risk of injury. For someone to shoot a trapped fox - ask at the local feed store, door-knock the nearest farm, everyone rural generally knows someone helpful, or the secretary of the nearest gun club, sporting shooters people. Alpacas. When I got my bottle-raising lambs, my vet said "Okay I'll look after them for you, make sure they get all the right needles, worm, lice, dock tails, castrate. But you will rue the day you got pet sheep, and you will never have a garden again". Well the vet was 100% accurate. Alpacas are marginally worse, they tip-prune everything at a greater height, scratch themselves on young trees and break them, not much they don't wreck unless it's strongly established. As do ponies, they are wrecking balls as well. My garden is stuffed: the geese are also now banished because they dug up all the bulbs and ate them. At least the alpacas didn't do that. Oh you need to get a list of poison plants to see nothing toxic is available - I lost two alpacas because they ate some oleander leaves. On the plus side, they are much more respectful of fences than sheep or horses or cattle, and very easy to keep fenced where you want them, not pushy or escape artists.

Just spoke to Robyn, the business is now re-opened with a name change to broaden it but google itsatrap Kyneton finds the site with phone no and some details. The big wire fox traps are dearer than the Chinesey ones, thought they were, something around $300. And they have the humane soft-foot traps something around $55. Open Wed to Fri only, normal bus hrs, and Saturday mornings. (And on line they arrange delivery Australia-wide). Only an hour from me which is handy. On euthanasing a trapped fox, I'd be amazed if any vet would do it, best to check first. All I've known of have refused. How would they - it's not as if they can hold it for an injection even like a cranky cat. The usual thing is a local farmer with a gun, someone with a bit of experience. Could be something helpful on the backyard poultry forum, but I would not even mention it on any of the fb pages, it just incites the stupids to foam at the mouth and pass on tenth generation anecdotes.

Good Boronia - I'd thought they were just a gimmick like the anti cockroach or mouse or rat plug-in scammy things.

But it's back to the toolbox or belts and braces - the more ways you have to keep them safe the better. Traps would work for me because foxes around are confident and cheeky, some places they are suspicious and wary. Some good traps are a bit dearer, $150-200. Where (approx.). are you in Vic Rascal? - "Its a Trap" in Kyneton were great, they have closed the shopfront but Robyn still supplies by mail order, I think. I just left her a voicemail so will let you know what the system is now after she calls. (Highly recommend). If you search online tonight look up itsatrap Kyneton. Netting with large trees is tricky but do-able - as normal at around 6 ft high on posts, but work a netting inverted cone around the trunk without trauma to the tree. An orchard near us nets quite large trees - foxes climb the fruit trees and can eat a crop of cherries or apricots. Oh cats and hot wires - same with your dogs and chooks, they'll generally only need the one hit to keep them off it, no harm done, just a helluva fright. Some egg producers with free range paddocks use them, just one wire at normal fence top. The chooks only try to fly over once and give the idea away.

It's tough Rascal, and you've really answered your own question. I started here seven years ago with the plan of all the poultry being out and free to run about all day long. I have given up on that, it does not work. Maybe three months will pass without a hitch, then total disaster strikes. Guardian animals paws or hooves have to sleep, or eat, or take time out because they feel like it (like all of us). If there is only one the ask is too great. The guardian is only one tool in the box, second to good pens and total vigilance when they are 'out'. I had a Rottweiler who was efficient, certainly as good as any Maremma I've known. (Bone cancer took Piper three years ago). A Shetland Sheepdog cross - Rheneas was great on foxes til he tackled one and was bitten and beaten and lucky to survive - it made him very circumspect about them, and he's now over 14 and totally an inside dog. Frodo was a black poodle cross and always stalked from overhead by eagles, I wouldn't get a really soft natured dog again, they seem to recognise this from a distance. You're not negative, there are lots of strong small dogs besides JRs, even cross-breds. Another excellent aid is electric fencing, upfront outlay say between $500-1000. Again it is not 100% at all times, but combined with locking in pens at night has proved very effective for some if it is done right. (I'd do that around the geese if I didn't have alpacas surrounding them).

A few people near us have Maremmas. One of the drawbacks is their frequent barking both day and night which can cause serious neighbour difficulties. To be honest, balancing the cost of a good pup or young dog, and as you mention best care vet etc for the first year, would probably pay for a large chook pen or two - fully fenced and netted over - proof against foxes and birds. I do see Maremmas kept in pens with poultry, and it looks like a miserable life even for a guardian dog. They are often of no benefit against birds, simply not regarding birds as 'the enemy'. One distant neighbour with two Maremmas and a Bernese still loses poultry to foxes all too often - inadequate pens and too much reliance on the dogs. We have considered taking on a Maremma, have breeders nearby with health tested quality dogs at 'pet' prices, unregistered, good working strains, around $600-800 for an 8-12 week pup. Looking at it from every viewpoint I know it would not be right for me: Rheneas wouldn't cope well, and at 14 he deserves not to have the stress of a new dog. Two neighbours are within barking sound: I hear their dogs but they are not frequent or loud barkers at all, very different. I don't mean to sound negative, and know that Maremmas work brilliant for some poultry owners, but wouldn't be a good fit on our 12 acres. I do put a lot of trust in the alpacas as guardians. They are good at it, must be two or three as they need own-kind company, and one to guard while the other sleeps etc. A couple can live on a half-acre with supplementary feed, probably cheaper to buy and maintain well than a Maremma even if on full hard feed when grazing is scarce. They bond to sheep best, but will guard poultry quite effectively. When I lose a chook or duck to foxes it's because I've put the alpacas in another paddock instead of having them close to the pens. Again they are not so great against birds, but not hopeless either. And of course alpacas will graze on any garden they are given access to, so that's a planning/design challenge to save the roses. Geese and ducks: crows and even worse magpies wait and watch til an egg is laid and grab it. The only sure protection is overhead netting - and a dog of any kind is seldom proofed against eating an egg laid under its nose, that's not a fair expectation. All up it's a lot to consider: I guess my ideal would be alpacas, but also one or two good small dogs, Jack Russel or something active and confident, that would be the childrens' best mates and always close to them and the house for garden area protection of chooks. And won't demoralise visitors. Plus very sound pens and runs following fox-proofing rules.

I share your grief Westiemum. I haven't been able to note Frodo's passing at Rainbow Bridge either. Too soon, too raw. Rest in peace Sarah, we all care.

Or getting down and dirty. The tomatoes are great in this weather, gives them a change from dry and dusty, and great food value with the usual bagged grain etc. 12/52

True Perseph. And geese. Geese can always make you laugh. This one just today doing a bit of an arabesque - or something. Total elegant anyway. 11/52

Blue the Duck disappeared, and thought she had been taken by the same fox that caught a few of them on the dam some weeks ago. Yesterday she appeared from the crawl-space under the house leading ten ducklings, no more than a day old. The bloody drake killed one, just attacked them to get at the duck - Muscovy drakes can be nice, but not this one, he is a right bully. So now there are nine, tucked up with their mum in a safe pen away from foxes, hawks and domestic violence duck fashion. Cute as: didn't really need another lot of little time-wasters. 10/52

I hope the OP wasn't scared off by the reality of the complexities and time inputs needed for dog training. I also hope the OP didn't resort to fb poultry groups for advice: today's gems there on the subject applaud the benefits of "a good flogging" and of "swapping the dog for a pot-plant".

In Frodo's last year I had to simply resign myself to living with sleep deprivation. At least twice a night, often four times, he would say he had to go outside, or snack, or be shown where his water was (still). And I'd say it took months for me to get over it, totally exhausting. In retrospect I wish I'd put him onto five meals a day instead of 2-3. I now do that with Rheneas and feel it makes life easier for him - my logic that it's probably better to start the "smaller and oftener" meal snacks well before it becomes a need and another change for their systems to cope with. Rheneas still has a little sight and hearing. But no voice, and that is a major worry now: management gets an extra degree of difficulty - he has a great 'sign language' range, but of course I can't see him signing when it's dark. Need to kind of sleep with one eye open to be aware when he gets up to walk around. We think Rheneas is 14+, a year or two younger than Frodo who was 15+. Not wanting to sound negative, for me it's not so much a management plan, more of flexibly coping with their needs day to day, ( or more so night to night). A good torch to hand in case there is a power outage at a critical time is a must.

Okay. When Eques folded I pretty much lost track of what was said/thought about it.

On rabies, back in the day I worked in quite a few rabies countries. Never heard of a cat catching it. Monkeys are carriers, and baboons and other monkeys are the main food of leopards, so they have been eating rabies carriers from pre-history - maybe they have an immunity, or maybe it can only transmit through saliva from a bite into the bloodstream. (Yet horses can catch a closely related bat-transmitted virus from just access to bat-poo under fruit trees and transmit it to people).

I so relate. Self talk "Don't be silly, nothing here to worry about" can be powerless against primordial fear of the night and the wild. For anyone who has never had a panic attack, being alone in the middle of a forty acre paddock, freezing cold and howling wind, 2 o'clock in the morning pitch dark, and the torch battery fails can trigger it. That's fun. Total sympathy with the Babes in the Wood, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel.

In Kenya I was told that dog is favourite food for leopard, added to they have a hatred of dogs so will seek them to attack. One family I was staying with as a house-guest had their dog taken by a leopard, it crashed through the insect-screen of an open widow, grabbed the dog from the room and carried it straight back out. This was not a farm, a game warden's house in a National Park. (Duck is favourite food for foxes, which is why I am awake at stupid hour because fox is tonight prowling around my geese. Not that a fox won't grab a small dog if the opportunity presents).

8/52 So sad: little crested dove, first day out of the nest. Two days later a hawk swooped in and took it, right next to the back step. Magpies then attacked the hawk and it dropped the dove but too late already dead. So admit feeling a bit anthromorphic and instead of giving it back to the predator birds I buried it under a rose bush. There are two left bopping around okay. 9/52 And it would have been nice to get just one pear from my super cropping pear tree, but that was never going to happen was it! Next year I might net it, but don't like the risk of a bird getting injured in the net. Big day tomorrow: our first day of volunteer clean-up picking in a pear/apple orchard - so not going hungry for pears in the greater scheme, just the opposite.

Then there's this lot - a bit 'commercial' but would have good rspca experience when you hunt through their site: http://lawyersforcompanionanimals.com.au/about/animal-welfare-issues-2/

There was a group of Barristers and Solicitors in NSW called something like Lawyers for Animals - I think it was more of a legal ethics group - I know it had some very genuine and dedicated animal lovers in the best sense as core members. Maybe some googling would find whether they still exist, this was around ten years ago that I was aware.

Sad news Karijin. but so lovely you were there with him. Rest in peace Scout.

The high price is probably a very good thing. If the price was low there would be greater market from wannabe backyard breeders looking for a flavour of the month product to churn out. At least the high price on these pups keeps some limit on numbers. And some limit on the people who like Diva said "don't know any better" who would be breeding-on if they could afford a pup.

So that's where that dust-storm came from: and there I was blaming Broken Hill. It's pretty bad Perseph, I'm the same, no feed here, I'm now over-stocked on my small patch, bare ground blowing away (not to mention a weekly feed bill that is scary). No photos, didn't seem right. My next door neighbour's hay shed burnt down yesterday, lost their Autumn supply of hay for sheep, horses - got most stuff out before it went wild, but still lost some machinery as well as the hay and the shed. Had its spectacular moments. House and vehicles okay, people okay, animals okay. Six fire engines, they came from every town around. So lucky, no-one complaining, if the hot wind had changed it could have hit the box forest next door and full on bushfire through farms. Never a dull moment, but couldn't shoot it this time.

6/52 Bunny of the Day 7/52 Yesterday morning just on sunrise, and the moon setting in the west. Love a white moon in a blue sky. The new basic little camera surprises me sometimes.