Anyone else have a fox that leaves scat in your stalls?
Horses are turned out at night.
I’m happy it’s keeping an eye on things, the mice are a problem.
I suspect your mice will be gone shortly. We have not had any mice or rats since a local fox added our barn to her morning rounds. The foxes in our neighborhood are much appreciated.
We have a tremendous number of coyotes on the farm, but they tend to stick to the low grounds near the river.
I’ve seen fox scat along the farm roads. 2 nights ago there was some I the pony’s stall. This morning there was scat in the OTTB’s stall.
I don’t have a barn cat. I’m planning on moving into my own barn soon (fingers crossed), so haven’t gotten one for the farm I’m leasing. I am happy to have help controlling the rodent population!! Whether it’s from a snake or a fox!!
I hope the coyotes don’t kill your fox. In our area, the coyote pack that came through killed several foxes. It was sad. How is your rodent population doing? My guess is that their numbers are way down, if your fox visits regularly.
We have a fox who visits but does not mark the barn.
The coyotes are more dangerous and I do worry about them.
I had a fox that would sleep in my hay loft. Surprisingly enough, a VERY aggressively territorial barn cat adopted me, and the fox went back to sleeping in the culvert den. Cat wasn’t sharing.
I had zero issues during his time in my barn. I would just talk loudly while doing grain, and I’d see him slip around the corner and run out in the mornings.
Foxes are related to dogs. They are smart and kill mice.
They don’t bother cats. But make sure any chickens have wire on the ground and sides and top of their coop.
Well my black lab has disposed of 3 mice and insists there are others in residence, so apparently the fox is not managing the population as well as I’d like. The way the stall walls were set up allows a space that the mice can create a home. Oh joy!!
We had a fox that moved in next to my last barn, and she tried to stake the barn area as her’s. The barn cat had other ideas, and when the fox tried to press the issue the cat actually walloped the vixen despite probably being a few pounds lighter. I was cleaning stalls when I heard the kerfuffle, and stepped out to see the cat in the courtyard puffed up like a blowfish and the vixen running hell bent across the arena.
Miss Vixy would sit at the edge of the ring, which the cat acceded to her, and bark at my dog when I had him with me. Everyone sorted their boundaries pretty quickly and painlessly.
WNT, great story!
I had a fox that lived in my feed shed one winter. It was a miserable winter, lots of sleet and ice storms, and he would find his way in, snack on the cat food and curl up in a corner and nap. He would escape through the stacked hay if you disturbed him. I certainly had no problems with mice, and he was very polite - if he made a mess, he did it in the spilled lime around the lime can.
Somehow he worked this out with the barn cat, who wintered in the tack room, and all the dogs.
She was a very entertaining neighbor, and even raised a litter of cubs right next to us this past summer.
Ar my previous barn we had a lovely gray that we would see popping in and out of the stalls through the grain hole. I’m sure she snapped up a lot of mice.
