The Vixen Diet

Transcribed from Channel 4’s “Foxes Live” series.

Mark Evans: “How much food does a vixen with cubs actually need to eat? Well there are three big chunks of calories she’ll need.

The first is just to keep herself going. It’s like the fuel your car uses when it’s idling. Now that in the case of a vixen is about 250 calories, about the equivalent of one hamburger.

The second big chunk of calories is to fuel her moving around, her hunting and her normal daily activity. Again that’s about another 250 calories.

So that’s what she needs for her, but then there’s the big numbers in terms of calories. Her body has got to make this super strong milk to fuel the development of cubs that are growing really really fast. For each one of those cubs, she needs to consume to produce that milk another 250 calories on average while she’s breast feeding. So that’s 2500 calories that she has to be able to consume just to look after her cubs. That’s about the equivalent of a human mum feeding a baby at peak milk flow, which is a huge number of calories.

But then think about this if you equate it to something else. If she’s actually nearer a chicken takeaway, that’s how much chicken she would need to eat (10 drumsticks) . But hopefully she’s not having too much fast food. If it’s wild food then we’re talking a herd of mice every day and if she was hunting exclusively earthworms, she would need to eat around one thousand of these worms everyday. That’s a colossal amount of food. So Gertrude being there, Phil, is great in terms of taking some of that workload off but actually does it delay the weaning of the cubs having more milk available and affect their development and behaviour?”

Dr Phil Baker: “I think at this stage it’s more quantity is perhaps more important than quality, although, there is increasing interest in terms this kind of diet is not necessarily good for them. So having her around is a big advantage. The other thing is it’s an advantage for her. She may gain experience of how to be a mum in the future.”

Mark Evans: “Which would be great news if she has another litter.”