A visit from Mr Fox

Our next door neighbour had been leaving the door of her chicken coop open at night, thinking they would be fine during the nice weather.

Mr Fox, needing to feed his family, had other ideas. After devouring one chicken, biting the head off another and fighting the huge drake, he was chased away by a friend who on hearing the commotion went to investigate.

We hadn’t heard a thing.

There’s been reports of foxes killing the chickens on the allotments but I didn’t expect them so close to home.

A couple of years ago they used to visit the allotments during the day and didn’t seem to be afraid. A short while after posing for the attached photograph this one curled up and went to sleep.

So apart from being more vigilant and building a stronger coop there’s not much we can do to stop our chicks from becoming part of Mr Fox’s take away menu. In the greenhouse the staging collapsed with the weight of the plants so has to be rebuilt.

We still have around 40 trays of plants desperately needing to be planted out but it’s still too dry to do this.

The weather has taken it’s toil on the conservatory so we’ll have to make a new door, as well as needing to replace numerous fencing panels.

All this and looking after the allotments and garden. Who said the good life was easy?

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