Importance Score: 45 / 100 🔵
Cunning invertebrates that scavenge through trash, raid poultry houses, and excavate holes in your cherished green spaces.
A Menace in Disguise
Despite their charming appearance, foxes can be a nuisance for horticulturists. These crepuscular creatures roam in the darkness, exploring your garden, driveway, or even your waste bins in search of discarded food to consume. Although they are usually innocuous and do not carry rabies like their North American cousins, foxes can still wreak havoc by burrowing holes and creating chaos if they gain access to bins and scatter refuse.
The Eternal Struggle
For garden enthusiasts averse to local foxes encroaching on their territory, the effort to keep them at bay can be an ongoing battle. Some individuals attempt to use high-frequency “cat deterrents,” which tend to lose efficacy over time. Others simply try to drive the animals away. However, as foxes are active during the night, it can be challenging to intervene and deter them.
Commercial Solutions
Doff Stop Cat and Dog Scatter Granules Cost and Availability
Several merchants offer a cat deterrent that the manufacturer promotes as a natural, non-toxic remedy, which may also discourage foxes.
The Doff STOP Cat and Dog Scatter granules are priced at £3.97 from Asda and £4 from Wickes. Purchasers can also find the product online on Wiko’s website for £3.99, as well as from various other retailers at approximately the same cost. The granules are marketed to repel and prevent cats or dogs from “soiling” in your garden.
Claimed Benefits
- Contends to mitigate cat scratching and canine and feline defecation in treated areas.
- Proposes to mask odors in the affected area for an extended period spanning several days.
- Ambitious enough to provide training or behavioral modification assistance for your pets, by discouraging them from fouling areas treated with the product.
- Upholds that cats and dogs are drawn back to sites they previously fouled, regardless of whether the culprits were other animals or not.
- Asserts that the granules dispense a potent, long-lasting scent derived from natural plant extracts, designed to repulse felines and canines.
Effectiveness Based on Canine and Felines Behavior
Foxes behave similarly: they will mark territories they favor and use scent as a signal to return to productive hunting grounds, including your trash bins. Removal of the odor with the granules interferes with scent marking, preventing repeat visits.
The charity, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), recommends alternative strategies such as planting shrubs densely together. Incorporating prickly plants or small pebbles can also impede the foxes’ movement through gardens.