It seems to be working well. I do have a hunter who comes onto the property on a regular basis and whistles foxes up. He has only shot around eight for the year, so it is the baits that are doing most of the work. At around $1.50 each, the baits are highly cost effective.
Before baiting I was losing around 30% of my new born lambs to foxes. I had a stud and the ewes where numbered on their sides. Every morning I would drive around checking the lambing ewes and recording the twin and triplet births. Invariably the following day, the ewes would all only have one lamb. When threatened by a predator, the ewes response is to flee, taking the strongest lamb with her, which she protects. She lets the predator take the other lamb, thus ensuring the survival of herself and one lamb.
Since the heavy baiting programme I could count the lamb losses to foxes on one hand. The problem was so bad before, it was literally sending me broke, costing around $10,000 - $12,000 across 300 ewes.
I have recently incresased my stock numbers and with eight hundred ewes now, the cost of doing nothing would be closer to $30,000. That is a large chunk of my profit.
Like all things with farming, it is something that will require ongoing maintenance to keep fox numbers from building back up to plague proportions.
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