Post by silverdragon on Feb 28, 2017 11:25:54 GMT
Taken from elsewhere on this forum, author myself, although I cant take credit for the idea....
This is a good possibility for a myth, can you educate predators in the locality to NOT hunt your own livestock.
This I know "works", some may say it doesnt, is it a myth worth testing that you can educate wildlife like this?...
On a farm in the area of where the southern UK part of my family live, the local farmer got some dead chicken and treated it with that stuff you put on the end of pens that tastes awful to stop your kids chewing their school pens?..
The local foxes were allowed to discover this, and try eating it.
He repeats that two or three times a year.
Mostly the bait is taken, chewed, and spat out.... mostly by the younger foxes from the last litter?.. [they set camera traps to find and identify the local inhabitants..]
But less and less by the older "educated" foxes. They still come, sniff, and walk away. Chicken is not on their menu.
The local fox community now know that chicken "Tastes bad", and are even teaching their kids NOT to hunt chickens, and by being there, being territorial, they are also preventing other communities from hunting on their territory...
The cost?.. maybe half a dozen chickens a time and a pot of that nasty tasting stuff.
Thats cheaper than loosing maybe a dozen hens a month to Fox and other predators....
And with the fox being left alive, its preventing other foxes moving in to an empty teritory that has to be educated all over again NOT to go near the farm?..
Meanwhile, the farm its self is used frequently by the foxes, who hunt vermin that feed on the chicken feed....
They have the solution to vermin "fo-free" by educating the foxes, who are welcome as long as they dont take the chickens.
Yes occasionally there is a "visit" from a non-local fox, but not for long, as the territorial owners of that patch will chase them out, quite quickly.
Winners all around?..
This is a good possibility for a myth, can you educate predators in the locality to NOT hunt your own livestock.
This I know "works", some may say it doesnt, is it a myth worth testing that you can educate wildlife like this?...
On a farm in the area of where the southern UK part of my family live, the local farmer got some dead chicken and treated it with that stuff you put on the end of pens that tastes awful to stop your kids chewing their school pens?..
The local foxes were allowed to discover this, and try eating it.
He repeats that two or three times a year.
Mostly the bait is taken, chewed, and spat out.... mostly by the younger foxes from the last litter?.. [they set camera traps to find and identify the local inhabitants..]
But less and less by the older "educated" foxes. They still come, sniff, and walk away. Chicken is not on their menu.
The local fox community now know that chicken "Tastes bad", and are even teaching their kids NOT to hunt chickens, and by being there, being territorial, they are also preventing other communities from hunting on their territory...
The cost?.. maybe half a dozen chickens a time and a pot of that nasty tasting stuff.
Thats cheaper than loosing maybe a dozen hens a month to Fox and other predators....
And with the fox being left alive, its preventing other foxes moving in to an empty teritory that has to be educated all over again NOT to go near the farm?..
Meanwhile, the farm its self is used frequently by the foxes, who hunt vermin that feed on the chicken feed....
They have the solution to vermin "fo-free" by educating the foxes, who are welcome as long as they dont take the chickens.
Yes occasionally there is a "visit" from a non-local fox, but not for long, as the territorial owners of that patch will chase them out, quite quickly.
Winners all around?..
