I live in Australia and I can tell you for a fact that the red foxes we have here (brought here by the British along with the cursed rabits so they could go hunting) definitely kill sheep and chickens.

I watched a red fox near Tamworth, NSW take down a sheep and kill it just yards from the road. The NSW Pastures Protection Board can probably tell you a lot about them.

I have had foxes get into my chickens and kill them for sport -- at least they did not take any of them, just bit off the heads. We weren't sure what had taken them until a red fox walked by us at dusk in our yard within less than 4 metres from us. It was most probably domesticated for it to have been so brazen with people. My wife works in Bio-Security in the Vet Lab (Toowoomba) of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries. They also do work for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (I think these two departments may have been spun off separately), so she does know quite a bit about problems with foxes and other feral animals.

well, the only thing i can really say is to think of both sides.
Okay, it is not good at all for you and your chickens and sheep, but foxes need to eat too. So do not try anything stupid...

I understand what you have to say, but the fox did not kill my chickens because it was hungry. The fox did not eat any of my chickens. It just bit their heads off!

By the way, I grew up in Japan and my mother was half Japanese (she was born in Yamaguchi). Her mother was Yamada Tsune, the eldest sister of Yamada Kosaku.

Cheers

What strange behavior. Why would a fox expend all that time and energy to kill a bunch of chickens, and then just leave them there? As opposed to at least carrying them off and caching them for later, if not eating them right away? What a waste that is.

Don't know about foxes, but I know wolves don't slaughter thier prey for fun. Never. They only go hunting when it is absolutely neccesary. Even if killing a chicken or two is no real challenge to the fox, it is still a waste of time. Why would any sane predator waste valuable energy like that, it just makes no sense?

Australlia. I'm not sure what kind of diseases run in Australlia, but some diseases, like rabies of course, can cause an animal to go mad. But maybe rabies isn't in Australlia, I don't know. Certainly, there are other diseases that could lead foxes to insanity.
Foxes don't usually hunt game much larger than a rabbit, so again maybe an illness caused that certain fox you witnessed take down that sheep. It'd make more sense of the sheep was wounded by a car incident and the fox finished off easy prey, but I wasn't there.


Personally, I don't think foxes would risk their life to kill chickens for sport. Even foxes tamed by human hand-outs. They're smarter than that. When I lived on my farm, I always heard coyote's howling in the distance but my livestock was never attacked. It's not the same everywhere though.

A quick google suggests that foxes are predators of lambs in some parts of Australia (dingos are also a much bigger threat). In the UK they may occasionally take young lambs, but would rarely attack an adult sheep.

As for the chickens, foxes will devastate a coop if they get in. It's not 'killing for fun' as such, but a fairly obvious strategy for a lazy predator when faced with a group of cornered prey that can't escape. The fox will kill what it can and return at its leisure to feed and/or carry away to cache. This is actually quite efficient behaviour (if you discount the fact that humans will remove the kill, rendering the process pointless from an efficiency perspective). The fox is killing several days feeding in probably less than 20 minutes.

Okay, that makes more sense. Thanks, Words. Although I feel a smidge silly that I didn't figure it out myself beforehand, it's quite obvious.

nice answer Words =) i found the same information