Fox fact file

The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) is seen in Britain in both urban and rural areas. As a species it adapts very well to both environments.  The red fox can live in and around sea cliffs, sand dunes, salt marshes, peat bogs, high mountains, woodland and most abundantly in urban areas.

Due to the lack of persecution in towns Foxes are often seen during the day and manage to survive very well with the amount of food wasted close to fast food outlets. They are often fed by people in their gardens, giving delight to those who enjoy seeing wildlife sharing their lives with them. The main reasons that foxes come into to Secret World Wildlife Rescue is because of mange or road traffic accidents.

In the countryside foxes do tend to be maligned due to the damage that they sometimes cause when poultry are kept in housing needing repair and often because people have forgotten to close the poultry house once dark. Vixens (females) will sometimes come in to take food during the day but this is usually because she has cubs that she needs to feed.

The mortality rate for foxes is very high in the first year. Once they have survived this, get to know the danger of roads, learnt to forage and have a social group that they belong to, a fox can live up to 10 years of age. Typically cubs can become orphaned if their mother has been run over on a road or shot. Secret World can deal with up to 50 orphaned fox cubs each year.

Appearance
Head / body length 62 - 72 cm plus tail 39 - 41 cm. Females are slightly smaller than males. Weight: male @6.7 kg, female @5.4 kg. Coat is variable in colour - usually reddish, but can be orange or yellow with a dark stripe down the back. The under parts are white, grey or slate in colour. Limbs are commonly black.
Tip of the tail – ‘brush’ is usually white.

Diet
Rabbits, field voles, insects, earthworms, birds, grasshoppers, beetles, blackberries, plums.  Surplus food is buried

Breeding
The life of a fox is very short as on average the life of a dog fox (male) is approximately 15 months and vixens, 18 months. Most of the cubs are born in March/April and are a dark chocolate brown which is camouflage for them in their dens. Fox cubs have a white tip to their tail. And their eyes open when they are 11 to 14 days old. By three weeks cubs are eating solids and by 4 weeks, fighting for it!

Characteristics
Foxes live in social groups. The numbers in each social group is controlled by the amount of food available to them. A fox can trot at 6-13 miles per hour and the maximum speed that they can reach is 50 miles per hour - pretty impressive!  Foxes bury any surplus food known as ‘cache’ so they can return to it later.

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