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Location: Warwickshire
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 4,844
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Originally Posted by
IsoChick
So, if I wrote a post saying that I had a rat problem, and they were stealing over 15 eggs a day and taking chicks... and that I was getting the pest controller in to eradicate them... you (with the exception of Dawn?
) would disagree with me and say I should be nice to all the sentient life forms?
Originally Posted by
Borderdawn
Or a wasps nest or Bees nest in the garden that happened to sting the dogs, but hey they are animals too!! Just LOVE!!
So basically what you are asking is if it is not furry but sweet (as some people feel foxes are) is it ok to kill it? It is a good point.
My personal view point is that as far as possible, I don't kill anything.
In relation to bees, I've found very conflicting info as to whether they are protected or not. I think you had a nest which you were told by the council you couldn't touch Shelley (if I remember rightly?). Anyway, we have bees in our garden, I think they must be miner / masonary bees as they have a nest in the concrete path which has broken up a bit. They are about 15 feet from our back door. I have to open our shed door right by the top of the nest, they don't swarm at me and I don't harm them. We live quite happily alongside one another.
Wasps, although disliked, do good. Every year we have a nest start to appear in a shed next to the hens, an area used quite frequently and I do take it down. I usually notice it early, hopefully before the eggs are laid. The wasps pose a risk to us and our hens and it is impossible to protect the hens or us from them. Confined to a run, it is possible to protect hens from a fox although, as Steve said, it is more difficult to protect from a fox when they are free ranging. I don't kill wasps when they come into the garden. We have a laurel bush in the girls enclosure and the wasps are attracted to the new leaves. I prune the new leaves from the bottom couple of feet of the bush (out of the girls reach) and the wasps automatically go to the new leaves well out of reach of the girls.
We have had wasps nests at my Dad's. One was at the bottom end of the garden, surrounded by fields, and we left it alone and just kept out of that corner of the garden. He had another one in the guttering above the front door. It was obviously quite a large one and as soon as a car pulled onto the drive the wasps would swarm all over it. My sister was pregnant at the time and couldn't waddle very fast into the house. We did call pest control out because they would swarm all over us in a very aggressive manner and again, they posed a risk to us that we could not protect against.
Moving onto rats, many people have a phobia about of rats, I don't. I've had pet rats, granted they are different to wild rats, but I don't automatically think eeeeugh when I think about rats! Difficult one because if you don't deal with them, a neighbour will. We once found a couple of droppings in our shed, we turned the whole shed out but never found a nest. I presume one came through, found nothing worth hanging around for (the girls food is well stored) and it left. Again in terms of protection, I would be concerned that if a rat could get to my girls, a stoat could also get through such a small gap and that would pose a real risk to my hens so again, I would up my security.
We have mice in the past, we left them to it but the hens ate them so that was that 'pest problem' taken care of.
So that is my thoughts on it.
A question for people who would shoot the fox for attacking their girls. What if it wasn't a fox? What if it was a cat, dog or human or a magnificent bird of prey. Obviously, you can't go out with a shotgun and shoot a small child for killing your hens (and yes that does happen, in fact we had a case not far from me where a group of kids let someone's chicken out and stoned the poor bird). If you can't kill a 'pest problem', how would you best go about protecting your birds?