Hens add colour to a garden

I’m not going to surrender in the fox wars, writes Dick Warner.

For most of my life I’ve kept poultry. It’s a family thing. My father did it before me. I find something comforting and homely about a run in the garden with a few gentle, clucking hens in it and I like the routine of going out with the dog to feed them and collect the eggs. They also dispose of a lot of kitchen scraps which would otherwise go into the bin.

Last spring I went to a poultry fair and bought five lovely new hens. They were pure-bred large fowl and I selected an interesting mixture of breeds. They settled in quite well, becoming tame and producing eggs in a variety of colours and sizes. Then things started to go wrong.