Urban foxes collected off city streets and dumped in the countryside where they're meant to live happily ever after.

Is the scenario modern day fact, or rural apocrypha? That's a question which has been asked many times in various parts of the countryside where suddenly locals see foxes wandering around in a bad state of health – and now it's being asked again on Western Dartmoor.

Some local landowners in the Horndon area have been seeing an unusual number of foxes in the past couple of months – many are emaciated, they seem to have no fear of humans and a couple of males which have been shot have been found to have been previously castrated.

Not only have a couple of the starving foxes taken to living in barns close to houses, but a Horndon smallholder has witnessed a pathetic fox being beaten off by a chicken.

"He just didn't know what to do – he was pulling the chicken along by its leg," the WMN was told by Chris Staniland, of Higher Rowes Farm. "The hen was squawking like mad – I ran around the corner and the fox didn't want to let it go straight away, then my dog came along and it ran off.

"But I had time to look at the fox and it was in a terrible condition," said Chris, who pointed out any rural fox worth its salt would have despatched the chicken in seconds.

"The chicken was fine – normally they go really shocked and you can lose them that way – but this one wasn't at all concerned."

Chris, who has lived at the farm for 21 years, told us that the emaciated fox ran to a neighbour's barn where the farmer said it had been living for a week. She has now borrowed a trap from the RSPCA in the hopes of catching the animal alive.

"What arouses our suspicions is the number of these weak-looking foxes and the fact that they are not scared of people," she added. "No country fox would live in a barn right next to a house – I've not heard of that before – and certainly you don't get castrated foxes in the countryside and a couple of these have been shot locally.

"I suspect they are urban foxes brought out, perhaps, by people who think they are doing them a favour. They're not. Maybe the people doing this were saving animals which were going to be culled in the city – but they are consigning them to a slow death – it's the worst thing you could possibly do."

Marion Saunders, of Hill Bridge Farm, near Horndon, is another landowner who believes urban foxes have been released in the area.

"A very weak fox recently came into my cattle-shed while I was there feeding the cattle," she recalls. "It walked right under the big bale on which I was standing – and just lay down.

"No country fox would do that," said Marion, who has lived at Hill Bridge for 40 years. "I felt by the way it settled down that it had been in the barn before – and I could see it was at the end of its life – but a sick fox in the countryside wouldn't seek out a barn in which to die.

"I went in there the next day and it was dead – I imagine it had died of starvation," said Marion, who took a photograph of its emaciated corpse.

"This hasn't been the only one around – I know a neighbour who has shot three foxes and two were males that had been castrated.

"That must point to the fact that these are city foxes which have been released here – maybe by people who think they are being kind – but, in reality, releasing them here would be completely against any good intentions.

"Whoever is doing this hasn't realised they are perpetrating cruelty and consigning these animals to a lingering death," she said.

A spokesman for the RSPCA in the South West told the WMN: "This is an old chestnut – we've heard such stories before about city foxes being taken out to the countryside, but have never found any evidence. It's certainly not something we'd be involved with."

She said if the RSPCA rescued foxes. it was often a family of youngsters which had, for some reason, been abandoned.

"If they are fit enough we do then release them – but only ever with the landowner's permission, from a special pen put on the land with the knowledge of the landowners. We certainly wouldn't do this."

Police force dogs bit 25 people, including police officer, in the last year

Little Obama the pony has got plenty of horsepower

Coastguards busy rescuing three dogs within 24 hours of each other

Experienced carers wanted for battling ponies who need separate homes