Podcast 004 – Why do foxes dig in your garden?

Hello this is Ben from the Fox Repellent Expert website and welcome to episode 4 of this podcast.

In this episode I’m going to discuss the reasons foxes like digging in your garden and what you can do to try and stop it.

So I think today’s topic is going to resonate with a lot of people because of the sheer destruction it causes in gardens. The aftermath of a fox digging holes in your lawn or throwing soil and potted plants across the patio is usually such a mess.

It’s the most visible problem caused by urban foxes and it’s so frustrating to look out the window and see your Monty Don-inspired hard work completely undermined.

So why do foxes do it?

1. DIET

Well, the first of several reasons foxes exhibit this destructive behaviour is to do with their diet.

Foxes are omnivores, which means they can survive by eating plant or meat-based food. Just for comparison, dogs are also omnivores, cats are carnivores (they must eat meat) and cows are herbivores.

So foxes can eat anything from discarded KFC chicken drumsticks to blackberries to cake. One of the reasons they’re so adaptable is because of their ability to eat anything.

In terms of the garden, foxes are very partial to earthworms and grubs. Worms in particular are an easy source of protein and make up quite a large percentage of a fox’s diet.

As we know, birds are fans of worms and grubs too. But whereas birds have dainty and precise beaks to extract them out of the ground with minimal fuss, foxes will frantically scratch and scrabble away at the soil to open up an area that enables them to catch several worms at a time.

You’ll notice the problem often gets worse after heavy rain as your lawn or flowerbeds will be nice and soft, making the fox’s prey much easier to catch.

2. BURYING FOOD

A second reason foxes might dig in your garden is to bury or cache food for coming back to later. Foxes are intelligent animals that will plan for potential future food shortages by catching and hoarding more than they need.

This idea of killing in abundance is why a fox that gets into a hen house will kill all of the chickens. It’s capitalising on the situation and left to its own devices would come back and bury each of the chickens for retrieval at a later date.

Burying food underground helps to keep it more fresh and foxes are great stock-takers, normally knowing exactly where they’ve buried food, even if it was weeks or months before. Some of this behaviour could be happening in your garden and might be an explanation for the holes.

3. DENNING

A third reason is that foxes are instinctively inclined to dig dens or ‘earths’. Sometimes a fox earth can be a simple hole, other times it can be a full set of interconnected tunnels with multiple entry and exit points.

Urban foxes are much less likely than country foxes to dig complicated underground warrens because there’s so many places in an urban environment that they can call home – under sheds, decking or garages are common examples, but even these ready-made fox dens often need a bit of digging to make them more accessible.

It’s also worth noting that foxes will dig holes as an alternative place to hide, in case the main den becomes too dangerous to go back to. So a fox could be living somewhere else but dig a hole in your garden just in case. In the same vein you might also see holes under fences or walls which provide a bolthole should the fox need to escape quickly Other times it could simply be younger foxes using your lawn or flowerbeds to practise their digging skills to prepare themselves for independence.

So foraging for food, burying or retrieving food, denning and escape routes are all very legitimate reasons for foxes digging holes. Take your pick as to which you think applies to your garden.

So what can you do to try and reduce this frustrating cause of such carnage in your garden?

PRICKLE STRIPS

A very helpful piece of equipment to have in your fox deterrent arsenal are dig-stopping prickle strips.

Prickle strips are rolls of plastic meshing that are covered in small plastic spikes. They’re particularly useful for laying down on areas of soil such as flower beds or vegetable patches. They’re also easy to cut to size to be used in potted plants or other small areas of soil.

The design of the strips means that plants or seedlings can grown up through the mesh, so you won’t be restricting growth by installing them.

The plastic spikes aren’t so sharp that they’ll cause foxes or other wildlife injury – you can press your hand down on them and they’ll cause indentations rather than pierce the skin, but they are enough to make a fox feel uncomfortable putting its paws on them and so are a great way of stopping them from digging.

I’ve got some prickle strips called Defenders DigStoppers and I’ll put a link to them in the show notes for you to look at. Each roll measures 2meters long by 30 cm wide, so it would be a good idea to measure the affected areas in your garden to decide how many rolls you need. You can secure them into the ground with tent pegs which helps to stop them moving around or being pulled up by a persistent fox.

Now if you’ve got a large lawn being torn up by foxes, it might be that laying down prickle strips isn’t the most practical solution. You could try them in the worst affected areas but it’s difficult to protect an entire lawn this way.

As i mentioned in the previous episode about fouling, you might want to consider using dedicated fox deterrents like Scoot Fox Repellent or the FoxWatch Ultrasonic Device to make your garden less attractive and to reduce the amount of time the foxes are spending there. If you can get foxes to associate your garden with a threatening smell or an irritating noise, they’re less likely to stick around long enough to dig holes and cause damage.

If you know where the fox enters your garden, is there something you can do to make it more difficult for foxes to access your garden like blocking up a hole in a fence or moving a spiky plant in the way or even putting prickle strips on the ground where the fox drops down from a fence or wall. Anything you can do to make entering your garden less appealing to a fox will ultimately help to reduce the amount of damage and destruction when you look out of your window!

That’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert Podcast. You can find the show notes to this episode, including links to the prickle strips and other deterrents by going to foxrepellentexpert.com/episode4 If you want any more information on how to humanely deter foxes from your garden, please visit foxrepellentexpert.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time for more fox related fodder.