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Food For Foxes Help Needed
MadonnaMIX
Posts: 9,692 Forum Member
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I have three foxes that have been coming into my garden every night Mum & her two cubs , Would it be ok to put a tin of dog food out for them to eat ?
Any other sugestions on what to feed them would be a great help , With all this snow the poor things must be starving
Any other sugestions on what to feed them would be a great help , With all this snow the poor things must be starving
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Foxes are wild animals and can find their own food. This time of year might look harsh but it provides plenty of opportunity to foxes as there is more food about not less as the snow makes birds weaker and easier to get.
Thanks
Some good tips here:
http://www.foxes.org/urbanfox/feeding.html
Good for you, I would do the same if the animals were thin and cubs were involved none of us know how long this cold spell is going to last .:)
After the horrendes experiance my parents had last year with foxes, I agree with this.
Sadly these things do happen as foxes are naturally predators but if people had not destroyed their natural habitat then they would not have to come into towns and cities looking for food and shelter, these animals are no different than human beings in that respect.
I understand what some of you are saying about Not encouraging foxes , But i live in the outskirts of Glasgow
I am surrounded by the countryside so i'm not bringing them into the city center
ARGH!!!!
Foxes belong in the countryside not the suburbs! You will do more damage to the cubs in the long run than if you leave them alone. They will never learn to hunt (why hunt when they can get their food on a plate) and come the summer time they will starve anyway. Or if you keep feeding them they will breed more foxes that will hang round houses, becoming a pest - and getting the pest control out to kill them.
We have foxes round where we live and they are a pain in the arse. They rip up bins and drag the contents all over streets and gardens. It doesnt help that the dirty kebab meat factory doesnt store their trash properly, but if you feed them you only encourage them to keep coming back.
If foxes and other wild animals really struggled that much in the countryside they would have died out as a species a long time ago.
surely that tells you all you need to know?
you dont need to encourage them though! Christ what is wrong with people!?
I do agree with a lot of what the above poster said , But is it right to watch three animals starve , The cubs are tiny & boney ,The mother is stick thin You can see every bone on her body
Foxes do not kill for pleasure. That's ridiculous. They kill as much as possible at once with the intention of returning for the food, whether to store it or to eat it. They don't kill pet rabbits to piss people off.
:rolleyes:
Foxes are omnivores and oppurtunists. They can survive in a multitude of habitats, eating a very wide array of foods depending on their location. Any fox cub that is raised by a vixen will be taught basic hunting skills that it shall retain throughout it's life. Unless a cub has been raised by humans and doesn't know how to hunt, it will not become reliant on being fed by humans and starve if that feeding stops. Urban foxes are aided by human food waste, and why not? They have as much right to love in our cities as we do.
Try not placing the food in same place each night, so they don't get too familiar with you feeding them.
Easy to throw (they'll be eating them from your hand if fed regularly). Very fatty (pastry) and very meaty. Lots of calories - will keep them going through winter.
A security guard at my father's offices would sit in his portocabin and feed the foxes who would turn up in their droves. One night my father drove us to his place of work and we watched the old man feed them (unbeknowns to him) and talk to them - from a distance you would have thought they were tame dogs the way they were with him (the vixons - female - were particularly tame). Was quite lovely to watch, especially when he dozed off and they laid down by his cabin (Dad wasn't too pleased at that for some reason
In this weather the fatty pastry and calorific contents will keep them going.
However being the softy I am I would probably feed them.
What a ridiculously short-sighted statement. How can you be unaware that until relatively recently there was a lot more countryside and consequently prey/food to sustain wild animals throughout harsh winters than there is now.
Humans have left wildlife struggling because we've removed their habitat and most of what nature provided to sustain them. Without human interference and encroachment wildlife has been proving for aeons that they're perfectly adept at surviving the harshest that nature has to throw at them.
As for your quote warning of the danger of catching rabies from foxes and statement "surely that tells you all you need to know?" - all it tells me is that you're ill-informed and evidently unaware that we don't currently have rabid foxes (or raccoons) in this country.
Op, foxes are omnivores, they're not fussy, they'll eat anything.