There are two other chicken keepers on our allotment site. We're very much the junior members, since we only have 4 chcikens, whereas they each have 60 or 70.
Last Sunday, one of them showed me a trio of Buff Orpingtons that he'd just bought. He was very pleased with them and they were indeed very handsome birds.
But when I went down this morning to see to our chooks, he was there, unusually early for him. He'd had a phone call from one of the neighbouring houses, who had heard the noise. Around 5am a fox had breached the defences and had killed around 15 chickens, including the new Orpingtons. All of their pathetic headless bodies were piled up in a wheelbarrow by the time I arrived.
It hadn't had time to get into the next compound so the remainder of the flock was safe, although frightened.
We live on the edge of the London area, in the suburbs, and many people feed the foxes, whose population has rocketed as a result.
Very sad.
