Blue Ridge Wildlife Center Patient of the Week: Red Fox

Photos / Blue Ridge Wildlife Center

These babies aren’t babies anymore!

After nearly 5 months of care, including syringe and bottle feeding, our red fox babies aren’t babies anymore! While we take joy in every animal we release, seeing our fox kits grow up from eyes-closed kits to competent and wild juveniles hits us right in the feels.

Red Fox Kit at Intake

We have now soft-released these juveniles so that they can begin hunting and perfecting their skills. During this transition time, we continue to provide food for them to fall back on, in case their hunting doesn’t go as well as expected. We use trail cams at the release site to monitor whether our foxes are returning for food, and to make sure we aren’t inadvertently feeding and congregating other animals instead! Over time, they’ll come back less and less as they solidify their skills and disperse to find other den sites.

We are always looking for more areas to release our animals, especially within Clarke County, Virginia. If you have appropriate property that you’re willing to allow us to erect temporary caging for soft-releasing foxes or raccoons, or to release other animals, especially groundhogs and skunks, please contact us at info@blueridgewildlifectr.org or call us at (540) 837-9000!