"Steve Haigh" wrote in message
...

Mind you, in a more recent program, "Tales From River Cottage", Hugh F-W
had installed an electric fence to deter the foxes, so maybe the hair
didn't really work all that well after all. A fence sounds all together
more effective.

I'm a fan of HFW even though we don't have a television but I read this
comment with some scepticism.

We've lost several pet hens over the last few years to urban fox (in the
inner city). Believe me, we've tried almost everything to prevent these
animals getting into our garden - excpet hair. Male urine was said to work,
it didn't. Renardine did work but only for a couple of days or until it
rained then it had to be renewed and it's expensive. People have suggested
traps (not a sensible solution) or guns (illegal in our setting), electric
fences have their own problems especially in respect to neighbours and other
wildlife, as has razor wire. I don't believe that hair would work.

The fox weren't hungry, they killed for fun - sport - instinct - call it
what you will. They killed and left the bodies of our loved pets, the
problem was to keep them out.

Eventually we built a legally maximum steel and chainlink fence all round
the garden. The boundaries at ground level were already protected by
concrete slabs on the neighbours' sides. Fox still got in. They were jumping
onto the wooden fence of a neighbour, walking along the top as though it
were a footpath and hopping over the corner of our fence. We solved that by
welding a row of upright steel bars round that corner and fixing loose
chicken wire along the top.

So far that's worked.

A mechanical barrier, in our experience, has been the only effective
prevention of fox ingress, it works where all the chemical ones haven't.

Mary