Chickens
in a school farm in north-western France are believed to have grouped and
killed a juvenile fox.
The
unusual incident in Brittany took place after the fox entered the coop with
3,000 hens through an automatic hatch door which closed immediately.
"There
was a herd instinct and they attacked him with their beaks," said Pascal
Daniel, head of farming at the agricultural school Gros-Chêne.
The body
of the small fox was found the following day in a corner of the coop.
"It
had blows to its neck, blows from beaks," Mr Daniel told AFP news agency.
The farm
is home to up to 6,000 free-range chickens who are kept in a five-acre site.
The coop
is kept open during day and most of the hens spend the daytime outside, AFP
adds.
When the
automatic door closed, the fox - thought to be around five or six months old -
became trapped inside.
"A
whole mass of hens can arrive together and the fox may have panicked in the
face of such a big number", Mr Daniel told the regional
newspaper Ouest France (in French).
"They
can be quite tenacious when they are in a pack".
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