Hello this is Ben from the Fox Repellent Expert website and welcome to  the latest episode of this podcast.

This episode is the third in this series, looking at what foxes are up to during each month of the year. This time I’m looking at the month of March and hopefully it will give you an insight to the behaviours and activities of your local foxes at this time of year.

Now March is a very important month in the fox calendar because it’s the time when the vixens’ give birth to their cubs. Incidentally, baby foxes can be called cubs, kits or pups – all three are correct so use whichever you prefer.

As the vixen’s 53-day pregnancy comes to an end, she will be spending almost all of her time in her den in preparation for the actual birth. When the birth does come some time in March, a typical litter will consist of 4 or 5 cubs. 

The cubs are born blind and deaf and struggle to regulate their body temperature, so the vixen won’t leave the den for the first two weeks to give her cubs the maximum chance of survival while they start to develop in that critical first fortnight. 

Even though the cubs start out deaf and blind and weighing around 100 grams, they will almost immediately establish a hierarchy with the more dominant cubs clambering over the others to access the teets closest to the vixen’s back legs, as these provide the richest milk.

It’s funny because newborn foxes are almost unrecognisable as foxes for the first couple of weeks. You may have seen the cubs trailing after their parents once they’ve starting leaving the den – they clearly look like baby foxes. But if you see them when they’re first born, it’s easy to mistake them for kittens or puppies due to their grey and then dark brown colouring. 

I believe that wildlife hospitals and rescue centres fairly often receive panicked calls from members of the public thinking they’ve found some abandoned bear cubs – that’s how unrecognisable newborn baby foxes can be.

Because the vixen initially remains with the cubs for the first couple of weeks, the dog fox will spring into action after his relaxing February to catch and bring food to the den. As we discussed in the last episode, there may also be a related female who hasn’t had a litter and she may also help with providing additional food.

The cubs rely exclusively on their mother’s milk so the vixen needs to consume a huge amount of calories to ensure she produces enough. It’s estimated she needs an extra 1000 calories per day, which is the equivalent of about 20 mice – so the dog fox and any helpers have their work cut out to keep up with demand.

So if you are seeing a fox in your garden in March, you’re likely seeing an increasingly tired and lethargic dog fox rushing around trying to catch enough prey. 

You’re unlikely to see the vixen for the first couple of weeks and you won’t see the cubs until they leave the den for the first time at about a month old – unless the den has become compromised in some way and the vixen needs to move them to a place of safety. If the vixen does need to move her cubs, she’ll do it by grabbing them by the scruff of their neck with her mouth and relocating to her backup den which she will have identified earlier in the year. 

If you’ve got a fox den in your garden, then have a look around to see if it would be easy for the vixen and her cubs to escape somewhere else, if necessary. Even leaning a plank of wood against a wall or a fence would be enough to give them a quick and easy escape route. Not only is this helpful for the family of foxes, but it will also help you feel less guilty if they decide they can’t stay in their den.

So that’s March in the world of a fox. A busy time for both parents and any other relatives that have been dragged in to help with the demanding cubs. Having helped out with my 21 month old niece recently, I have particular sympathy for those helper foxes.

In the next episode I’ll take a look at April and what happens when the cubs take their first tentative steps outside the den.

On a slightly different note, the 18th March was Global Recycling Day, which is a day aimed at promoting the importance of recycling, reusing and repairing, rather than simply sending things straight to landfill. It’s a good reminder that we should look at things around us as a valuable and finite resource rather than expendable waste.

I do my bit every week at home, separating out my recyclables and put them out for kerbside collection. This year however, I used Global Recycling Day as a good excuse to get a couple of small jobs done that I’d been putting off for months. I went through my wardrobe and bagged up some old clothes and bed linen and took them to my local Salvation Army clothing bank. They were all in good condition so I thought instead of them taking up space in my cupboards donate them to either be reused or the textiles recycled. I also took along a large pile of old batteries and printer cartridges and took them to my local supermarket which has dedicated recycling bins for them. 

Of course we don’t need to wait for the 18th March every year to do some recycling, but it’s a good way of getting those little jobs done and out of the way. It was only a small contribution but I felt pleased after I’d done it and was glad that a few less things would be going into landfill as a result. The 18th March is well worth putting in the calendar for next year.

Well, that’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert podcast. I hope it’s helped explain some of the fox activity in your area during this time of year. I’ll put any links mentioned in this episode in the show notes.

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Thank you very much for listening and I’ll see you next time.