Rearing turkeys in a forest does work

All those trees, all that long grass and green undergrowth – ideal cover for marauding foxes out for the kill after dark. “How many of your birds do you lose in a season to foxes?” they wanted to know.

Stephen Childerhouse of Great Grove Poultry, Norfolk, who reared 3000 of his bronze Christmas birds in a forest last year said: “Just three birds in all the 15 years.”

He said predators were kept at bay by a waist-high ring of electric fencing that circled the six-acre site. At nightfall birds were able to roost in safety on the lower branches, settle down in the undergrowth or take advantage of three sheds that date back to the time that the family ran a caged egg unit.

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