h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So killing them humanely will be for instance trapping - where foxes are known to have knawed off their own leg to escape the trap, or managed to free themselves but still have broken legs to wander around with or being strangled to death by a trap that does that. How about poisoning? what if it's not the fox that gets the poison but some other animal - poison is not selective. It doesn't nescesarilly lead to a quick and death either. Shooting. It's hard to get a clean shot when hunting so the fox will probably spend some time (as short as possible if the hunters are good) running round having been shot before it's finally killed.

So what will be the prefered humane way of killing them then?

How about a field trial of the revolutionary theory of not killing them?
They got on perfectly fine without our intervention before, and they will in all probability do so again.

A very good idea but not one that will happen for quite some time I think. Too many vested interests on both sides of the fence.

From a NZ point of view it would be excellent news for our poultry farmers. Once the foxes have slaughtered all the Pom chickens we will be able to fill the gap by exporting Kiwi fowls to Britain.

Most of the Pom chickens are imprisoned in battery farms. Haven't seen a fox with a crow-bar - yet.

Sal

Are the lambs born in captivity as well?

Yes actually, they are.
Beside, foxes aren't a threat to lambs. Crows are though. Perhaps we should have cross-country corvid chases?
On the subject of chickens, it takes less than five minutes to shut even proper free range ones into a shed at night and foxes find wire cutters just as hard to handle as crowbars.

It takes even less time to forget to close a gate or door.

The whole Brit practice of locking animals up in sheds is pretty inhumane. It is certainly not how nature intended them to live

Let me get this straight - are you saying we should exterminate another living creature, that has existed here at least as long as we have, just in case we might be careless enough to forget to latch a door?

I freely admit that "Nature" didn't intend my flock to shelter in their nice dry, wind-free barn at night, but they WILL keep going in there of their own accord! Even the peacocks go in when the weather's bad - and I, for one, don't blame them.

I have children too.
I do realise that we really should be living in a cave and it IS inhumane of me to fit locks on the doors and build fences and gates to stop the little ones wandering into the river or the road (let alone nailing the upstairs windows shut to keep the hyperactive one from climbing out), but I'm afraid I just couldn't help myself.
Forgive me for my insensitivity. I shall endeavour to be a more natural mother in future (like Jamie Bulger's, perhaps?).

You know, we have public footpaths running through our garden. We have rabbits, who used to run free all day, with planks leading up to their hutch doors, until a couple of large birds of prey moved into the area. After that we built some spacious runs (big enough for the children to fit into), with wire across the top, which the peahens also use when they have small babies.
Unfortunately many of the dear, caring townfolk who come to spend days in the countryside (incidentally, leaving their litter to become deathtraps for small wild animals) feel the same way as you do and we often find our pets shivering outside their escape-proof pens and our toddler-proof fences kicked down. In fact, one awful night, some misguided do-gooder opened all the hutches and the weasel that lives under the house wall killed some fluffy bunnie-wunnies that my toddlers had been used to cuddling for their entire lives. But Hey - that's Nature isn't it? It's a chance to teach the little ones the brutal realities of life
And I suppose we really ought to exterminate the weasel. Unfortunately we can't get rid of the raptors - they belong to a protected species.
And as for the NATO and USAF jets, (the ones that fly too low and cause the ewes to miscarry) and the DET (depleted uranium tipped) shells that shake the house - well, they're protected species too.
Personally, I'd rather have the foxes. They do less harm than the tourists and the squaddies.

All living things in Britain would be better off if the countryside was allowed to revert back to nature and foodstuffs were imported from efficient farming countries like Aus/NZ (no subsidies) where the animals live as nature intended them to and farmers children are not sheltered from the realities of rural life.

Farmers downunder work the land as a business, they don't just live on it because it is a pleasant lifestyle and they definately don't expect other people to pay their bills when times get tough. They budget for the good times AND the bad times.

Incidently, I wonder why NZ crows/falcons etc don't eat NZ lambs. Probably because the countryside is not drenched in pesticides meaning the birds can eat foodstuffs provided for them by nature. Kiwis recognise insects have feelings too. They don't just care about living things with cute faces or fluffy fleeces.

Cat's don't kill birds for fun, it's there instinct, there nature. Some people just don't know the difference between amoral and immoral.

Out of curiosity I did some research to see how our ancestors had coped with keeping fowl...it turns out that old style chicken coops are up on a pole and the chickens get in and out by a ladder which a fox cannot climb. Seems rather straight forward...

Doesn't quite work the same with the intensive production used in most places now. Quite an ingenius and simple solution though.

Does anyone have a convincing solution for the problem of what to do with all the foxhounds that a ban on foxhunting would leave 'obsolete'? Given that the foxhound's whole genetic raison d'etre is to hunt foxes in large packs, and as they have not been bred with anything like temperament in mind, they are effectively undomesticable. It would be unprofitable to keep kennels full of redundant dogs, so they would probably have to be destroyed.

Before anyone claims that they are domesticable, these hounds need company, so you couldn't just take one. They are fully grown animals, and require vast amounts of exercise, having been bred to keep up with a long cross-country chase. They will never have been kept in a domestic setting before, so a special enclosure might have to be built at great expense. And, as Dr Wonky Mungbean mentioned earlier, these dogs will have no qualms about shredding next door's cat.

Being totally provocative, I have a lot of problems with angling as a pastime. Walking dogs along footpaths by the river near where I live is a nightmare. The anglers can be rude and arrogant, and have even purposefully let my dogs take some bait still containing hooks on one occasion, laughing when one of my dogs got a hook through its cheek.

It might be argued that my family and I should keep a tighter control on our dogs; however, they are whippets, and cannot be walked effectively on the end of a lead. The anglers are usually not out when we go for walks, and our two dogs often like to press on ahead. Their sense of smell and groundspeed are infinitely superior to ours, so catching them is difficult.

The majority of anglers, admittedly, are good-humoured and do not object to the appearance of two friendly and inquisitive dogs.

However, my main objection is the mess that is left behind. Anglers often treat the riverbanks quite literally as a toilet. My family and I have had the nauseating misfortune to come across human excrement in plastic bags, discarded amongst used fishing tackle by the side of the river just off a well-travelled footpath frequently used by families with children.

And don't forget the kind of diet foxhounds are fed. None of this namby pamby pedegree chum. Raw meat. Lots of it.

As for angling I have certain problems with that coming from another viewpoint (as a canoeist).

What you describe with the anglers is the actions of people and not an inherrent part of the sport.

However, if there are too many fox hounds the obvious huntsmans logic must be to hunt them? Perhaps you could spray individuals with fox scent and then send the rest of the pack after them ... I mean - if it's not cruel or inhumane, that is...

So you infer that being an arrogant w****r is an integral part of foxhunting, and not just that some of the people who do it are a*******s?

And what would one hunt foxhounds with, precisely? And would you agree that a cull of foxhounds would be more inhumane than hunting?

I remain unconvinced that many animal rights protesters have thought this argument through; I am not pro-hunting, as many of its practices and practitioners are disgusting, but I object strongly to the hegemonic and patronising attitude of certain parts of the anti camp.

My statements about anglers are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course; whilst I find the behaviour of certain individual anglers abhorrent, the sport as a whole bemuses me (I don't have the patience) and I wonder (mischievously, naturally) what the reaction might be should animal rights groups start to champion the rights of game fish...

Seriously, though, if the bill to ban hunting manages to become law, will the government put any pressure on any of our European friends to cease their bloodsport activities? Given that the French hunt boar with even greater pomp and pageantry than us Brits manage for foxhunting (and they culled their aristocrats a couple of centuries ago too), and that's without even mentioning bullfighting or anything.

I'm sure that foxhounds could be trained to kill other foxhounds and that this could then keep their population down.

How about having all the hounds neutered.
Then, continue (and this sticks in my throat to say) your hunting until the dogs die of old age (or get shot/drowned in a bucket - well we should be realistic).
Voila - no mass drowning of hounds by huntsmen.

For the few years that this would take to happen, the government could subsidise hunt saboteurs to stick aniseed all over the place and be assaulted by huntsmen. This would mean no more foxes killed as well.

I'm sure that the country that turned cows into cannibals will be able to come up with a solution to deal with redundant foxhounds - and the upcoming problem of city-dwelling, hungry foxes attacking young children and domestic pets