How High Can A Fox Jump & Can They Climb Fences?

Fox-Proofing Your Home

Prevention is always better than looking for a cure.

Foxes can be creative and can enter your home any number of ways if you are not careful.

Here are some tips that you can follow so you can have the upper hand and keep these determined creatures from getting into your home or garden.

1. Remove Fox Attractants

The best way to avoid having to deal with foxes is removing anything that could attract foxes in the first place.

Foxes are omnivorous and are mainly attracted to food sources or things that could give them an easy meal.

1. Keep small pets like guinea pigs, rabbits, kittens, birds, and small puppies indoors. Foxes have been reported to snatch away small pets from yards if they are particularly desperate for food.
2. Foxes naturally love to forage for food at night so you have to make sure you don’t leave out food scraps or fruits.
3. Avoid leaving out fertilizers that are made of fish or blood or bones. These also attract foxes, as they can smell it from outside your property.
4. Don’t leave water bowls outside.

Foxes can also be attracted to small items that you leave in your yard that they may use as playthings.

2. Block Up Holes That Foxes Can Use as Lodging

Make sure you block up holes that you see around your home that they could use as hiding places or temporary dens.

Foxes live in dens that they dig out in the wild or expand from already existing burrows from other animals.

While they mainly shy away from human contact, they are opportunistic animals. They are keen to take advantage of what is readily available for them. If they can avoid unnecessary work, they will.

3. Use a Guard Dog (If You Have a Dog)

If you live on a farm, getting a guard dog is a good way to keep foxes at bay.

You have to make sure though that the guard dog you are getting will be bigger than the foxes that they will be guarding against.

Even in urban areas, having a dog at home can also help keep foxes away since they shy away from loud noises.

4. Use Fox Repellent

Foxes avoid loud noises and bright lights whenever possible. Getting a fox repellent device can help in making sure that your home is fox-free.

Fox repellents are small devices that send out ultrasonic sounds, bright lights, or a combination of both to startle the foxes.

They should be pointed towards the areas where you have seen foxes enter your property. Sensors will be triggered as these animals enter.

You can also use a chemical compound.

Some specially-formulated sprays and compounds can mimic the scent of foxes or much larger animals.

This tricks foxes into thinking predators hang around your property, or that other foxes have claimed it as their territory.

5. Spread Your Own Scent

As foxes are all about using scents as signals, you can also use this behavior of theirs to your advantage.

Foxes tend to avoid humans as much as possible, especially when there are many of them in an area. You can trick foxes into thinking that there are a lot of people in a certain area by spreading human scent all over your property.

You can do this by spreading hair in your garden.

Ask your local barbershop or salon for the trimmed hair and spread these all over your yard. You can also make use of your urine. This is especially effective if you can mask any scent markings that foxes have spread.

They will take this as a sign that there is a much larger predator or animal that lives in this area.

6. Use Sound to Keep Foxes Away

If you happen to see a fox venturing into your garden, you can scare it away by making loud noises.

Foxes don’t like loud noises and they get easily startled. If you scare them away, they may not return.

7. Trap the Fox

If foxes keep returning to your garden, you may have to trap them.

Professionals use humane box fox traps. Leg traps are deemed to be unsuitable.

Once a fox is caught in a trap, they are then relocated to areas in the countryside or euthanized.

8. Build sturdy fences

Building a sturdy, and tall, fence is another way of keeping foxes out. While they can climb quite high, fences can in some circumstances work.

Make sure that the fence is more than 6 feet tall, if possible. If you can’t build a wall that high, you can also place barbed wires on top of your fence.

Electrifying should be a last resort in residential areas but can be necessary for farms.

You should also make sure that there are no structures on the outside that foxes can climb on to for an initial height advantage.

9. Change up your garden

Since foxes are more or less a creature of habit, they like coming back to places that are very familiar to them. They love coming back to gardens that have pots and materials that they could use as toys.

One way to help avoid foxes from handing around your garden is to change it up. Relocate the things you have in your garden, plant new plants, etc.

10. Call Animal Control

When all else fails, it is best to get help from your local Animal Control office. These are professionals who know how to deal with persistent foxes.

You should call them if you see foxes on your property with odd behavior, or if they don’t respond to typical deterrents. These are signs of rabid foxes, which are dangerous to you and your pets.