The Diet of a Rural Fox
Foxes eat an amazing variety of food and this has been shown by various stomach and scat analyses.
It's a great mistake to imagine that they live solely on poultry, game birds and rabbits, as, although any fox will take all of these as opportunity offers, the fox really has no staple diet.
Voles, mice, frogs, carrion, worms and insects figure high on a fox's prey list.
Additionally, they hunt brown and mountain hares and even stoat when the alternative is stoat or hunger.
Birds of many kinds are killed as opportunity offers, from small Sparrows right up to the Giant Capercaillie.
Poultry are killed when people are foolish enough to allow access to their hen-houses.
Foxes don't carry keys and a well-protected hen-house will generally keep them out! A fox eats more worms than is generally realised.
Allowed access to a food store, a fox will eat cake, poultry pellets, milk powder or fish meal.
They are also happy to eat fruit including gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries and anything else that takes their fancy.
One of the great services that the fox does for the farmer is by killing rats.
For this reason, some farmers actually consider the fox to be fairly useful in the protection of crops.
One study saw a vixen carry 63 rats to her cubs in 10 nights of hunting.
The rats were entirely consumed, leaving only the tails.
In many rural areas of the country, the fox is well-known for attacking lambs, much to the dismay of many farmers.
You cannot keep a fox away from lambs as you can from poultry, so they can be problem animals.
Yet we know surprisingly little about fox predation on lambs, and this is something which is worth a lot of investigation.
It is no use simply counting lamb carcasses at a fox den as the fox could have picked them up dead.
At some dens, studies have shown that the lambs found had died of natural causes or been stillborn.
It is important to know what foxes are eating, although this doesn't always indicate what a fox has been killing.
An easy way to discover what a fox has been eating is to locate the den and just look at the carcasses scattered outside it.
Surprisingly for such a wily creature, foxes have no issue with advertising the entrance to their den by leaving the remains of dead prey.
If prey is in abundance, a range of bits and pieces will be lying about.
If food is scarcer, foxes and their cubs are more likely to eat everything so remains will be more difficult to find.
In conclusion, it is safe to say that the fox is not fussy when it comes to eating.
However, unlike the urban fox, which will often feast on the remains left by humans, food is scarce in the countryside for foxes.
Therefore if they do discover a large supply of food, such as a field of lambs or a henhouse, foxes will kill as many as they can and will keep coming back time after time.
For this reason, keepers of chickens and lambs must remain vigilant at all times.
It's a great mistake to imagine that they live solely on poultry, game birds and rabbits, as, although any fox will take all of these as opportunity offers, the fox really has no staple diet.
Voles, mice, frogs, carrion, worms and insects figure high on a fox's prey list.
Additionally, they hunt brown and mountain hares and even stoat when the alternative is stoat or hunger.
Birds of many kinds are killed as opportunity offers, from small Sparrows right up to the Giant Capercaillie.
Poultry are killed when people are foolish enough to allow access to their hen-houses.
Foxes don't carry keys and a well-protected hen-house will generally keep them out! A fox eats more worms than is generally realised.
Allowed access to a food store, a fox will eat cake, poultry pellets, milk powder or fish meal.
They are also happy to eat fruit including gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries and anything else that takes their fancy.
One of the great services that the fox does for the farmer is by killing rats.
For this reason, some farmers actually consider the fox to be fairly useful in the protection of crops.
One study saw a vixen carry 63 rats to her cubs in 10 nights of hunting.
The rats were entirely consumed, leaving only the tails.
In many rural areas of the country, the fox is well-known for attacking lambs, much to the dismay of many farmers.
You cannot keep a fox away from lambs as you can from poultry, so they can be problem animals.
Yet we know surprisingly little about fox predation on lambs, and this is something which is worth a lot of investigation.
It is no use simply counting lamb carcasses at a fox den as the fox could have picked them up dead.
At some dens, studies have shown that the lambs found had died of natural causes or been stillborn.
It is important to know what foxes are eating, although this doesn't always indicate what a fox has been killing.
An easy way to discover what a fox has been eating is to locate the den and just look at the carcasses scattered outside it.
Surprisingly for such a wily creature, foxes have no issue with advertising the entrance to their den by leaving the remains of dead prey.
If prey is in abundance, a range of bits and pieces will be lying about.
If food is scarcer, foxes and their cubs are more likely to eat everything so remains will be more difficult to find.
In conclusion, it is safe to say that the fox is not fussy when it comes to eating.
However, unlike the urban fox, which will often feast on the remains left by humans, food is scarce in the countryside for foxes.
Therefore if they do discover a large supply of food, such as a field of lambs or a henhouse, foxes will kill as many as they can and will keep coming back time after time.
For this reason, keepers of chickens and lambs must remain vigilant at all times.
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