I know a bit about foxes so I'm not being really silly with this one.
About 30 years ago, a forestry officer I was friendly with kept a vixen as a pet for quite a few months until she became a bit too much with his kids around.
But this weekend just gone, a young bloke I know well caught a young vixen (still with a fair bit of black hair) and has decided to keep it as a pet.

I think he's making a mistake as it will turn out wild. He hunts a bit and has a gun dog.

I think he should put it down.
Has anyone heard of foxes being raised successfully as pets?

With selective breeding you can breed the wildness out of them, as the russians did with their foxes used in the fur industry. One taken straight from the wild, I don't think it'll make a good pet but it all depends on the fox.

Wasn't there an artile in one of the mags about a Aussie shooter who had a pet fox?

Yep. Guns and Game years ago.

But still intertesting if others have had luck with a fox as a pet

Tried with an injured fullgrown male while working on the trans line in the middle of the Nullabor. Tried is the operative word. hope he has more succeess.

I've raised orphaned wild animals for thirty years. Five years ago I got a pair of red fox pups brought to me. They were maybe two pounds each, a male and a female.

I kept them for nine months and then released them. The female was very playful and loved to be held and petted. I believe she would of made a good pet. It did cross my mind to keep her, but wild needs to be wild.

The male was not as "friendly", more aloof. He would gently bite and hold my hand whenever I picked him up, letting go when I put him down.

They were, by far, the "smartest" wild animal I've personally raised.

I'd not think one could "tame" a half grown or adult fox.
troy

years of very selective breeding could produce a fox that is fairly tame but not so tame as to be like a dog. I would be wary .

I know a guy who got a fox cub and kept it in a unit in inner Sydney!! He finnally got rid of it because of the smell it left around the (indoor) unit! This was only a year or 2 ago!

I read in some magazine about a bunch of russian scientists doing selctuive breeding for almost 30 years. They were trying to prove dogs were "made" this way out of wolves. According to the article the foxes ended up behaving exactly as dogs. The article did point out that becasue of the smell, it was unlikely they could ever be adopted as regular pets.

I've got one.
It's a young vixen that turned up one day looking for a feed and decided to stay.
Because it was born wild it will never be completly tame but I can stand right next to it while I put the food down. It won't let me touch it though.
It just hangs around the house most of the time and lives in a rockpile a few yards away from the house.
It's no trouble at all and probably keeps the rodent numbers down so I have no issue with it.
Just the other night it came around with a young puppy....

I think if you could get one young enough and find a vet that would desex it on the quiet and give it the appropriate jabs etc, you would be in an excellent position of actually taming one completely and having a great pet.

They are a really superb looking animal.

quote:

I think if you could get one young enough and find a vet that would desex it on the quiet and give it the appropriate jabs etc

I wouldnt think a vet would risk his entire practice for a fox?
Come on guys, I like them too and they are my favorite animal to work on but they are a major pest in this country.

quote:

Originally posted by shehuntz:

quote:

I think if you could get one young enough and find a vet that would desex it on the quiet and give it the appropriate jabs etc

I wouldnt think a vet would risk his entire practice for a fox?

I personally know of 2 instances of it happening in a certain country area.

quote:

Come on guys, I like them too and they are my favorite animal to work on but they are a major pest in this country.

The pest status is over rated IMO. More is done to fuck this country up by land clearing for (over)grazing and the over use of water and pesticides than foxes eating a few lizards and mice etc.

quote:

Originally posted by shehuntz:

quote:

I think if you could get one young enough and find a vet that would desex it on the quiet and give it the appropriate jabs etc

I wouldnt think a vet would risk his entire practice for a fox?
Come on guys, I like them too and they are my favorite animal to work on but they are a major pest in this country.

Why, what regulations are being broken?

John, the last time I spoke with a vet it was illegal to treat a fox or any declared pests.

quote:

Why, what regulations are being broken?

In South Australia foxes are declared under s. 174 of the Natural Resources Management Act 2004 (SA), as a Category 1 animal across the whole of the State (see SA Government Gazette, 30 June 2005). As such keeping one in captivity is an offence carrying a maximum penalty of $50,000 fine or imprisonment for 12 months.

In Victoria the relevant provisions are under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994 (Vic) and foxes are declared to be a category 4 Established Pest Species (Victorian Government Gazette Number 6, 13 February 1997). While there is limited provision for holding them for research/education under permit issued under the Act a fox cannot be kept as a pet there either (see Landcare Note LC0303, and s. 67 Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994)

BTW It was Donald Mackintosh. famous trap shooter (recognised as Australia's first Olympic Gold Medallist) and Melbourne gunshop owner, who had a pet fox. He trained it as a "bird dog". Laws were different then, and there were fewer of them

Hi there, I am afraid that the red fox is one of the unfortunate imports that Auz has received from England. Being a generalist predator I can imagine it must be a terrible pest to small native mammals, birds and reptiles over there. I have not raised a fox myself, but with most reared wild animals, it totally depends on the character of the animal and how old it was before it was adopted. If it was hand-reared very early on, it would stand a much better chance of being 'tamer' later on, but it will always have the instincts of a wild fox most likely, and may or may not ever tame completely, will probably be hit or miss.

I had a cross fox (crossed between red and silver) for a couple of years; it just started hanging around the farm, and my kid started tossing it bits of food. It decided to stay, and tamed very quickly. It would come inside my office and beg for cookies, and all was well as long as the door stayed open - if the wind blew the door shut, all hell would break loose until we opened the door and let it out.
It would follow me all over the yard, and sit with it's head cocked sideways watching me work as long as I was out there, and if it wasn't around all you had to do was whistle, and it would be there in an instant. I didn't mind it, as it must have killed a lot of mice. You couldn't touch it, but it would stick around within a metre of you quite comfortably. Only animal I ever saw that could catch magpies, and it seemed to do it just for the fun of it.
One of my crazy neighbors ended up shooting it for the hide.

I also had a couple of coyotes that we raised from pups - had them 7 days before their eyes opened. As someone mentioned above, the female got very tame and stayed that way while the male went 'wild' as he grew up. You couldn't touch him, but the female would run at you, and jump into your arms - you were supposed to catch her, and then she'd try to lick you to death. That scared the hell out of quite a few visitors. They were stinky little buggers when they were pups, but that sort of went away as they matured.

The smell was going to be an issue here too and the guy put it down.

Donald MacIntosh's fox must have had a lot of attention lavished on it. Except when it was housed in the Melbourne zoo while he was out of the country...

Imagine him winning some shooting prize in the Olympics in 189? but having to accept it as a Pom I better find that Guns and Game and reread it

A bit of a question as to which country you'd accept your medals for back then, given that Australia hadn't yet been officially established as a nation. When Flack won all those events at the 1896 Games the officials at the awards ceremony first raised the Austrian flag, and at the 1900 Olympics Stan Rowley won three bronze medals for Australia before joining the British team in the 5000m teams race, winning gold for Britain.

Strictly speaking what Mackintosh won though was the Prix Centenaire de Paris. He also came equal third in another event, the Grand Prix de l'Exposition. These events were held in Paris while the 1900 Olympic Games was on, and were on the program, but were professional events - Mackintosh won 300 pounds as well as the prize medals.

These results were recognised as Olympic Games gold and bronze medals posthumously, in 1987.

quote:

Originally posted by GreybeardBushman:
... but having to accept it as a Pom

And even today a lot of people in foreign countries still don't think or know we are independent when they see our flag flying ...

15+ yr. ago I caught a red fox pup by grabbing it from behind as it watched a tractor working. It was prob 3 wk. old. Kids were still at home and played with it. We still have a pic of it hiding in a bowl of plastic fruit. I was playing with it when kids were away allowing it to grab at a wool sock then tugging it back. Next morning it was dead. I figgered I'd get another to replace it and no one would be the wiser so took my dog and went back to the den. Used the dog for a decoy and grabbed another. Amazing how much larger and wilder this one was, 3 wk. later. We kept him for 2 days but was not taming at all so let it go.
Last spring I caught a coyote pup by chasing it down and throwing my jacket over it. Kept it in the garage. It was a wild sob. Chewed the wires for the opener eye, wallboard, rubber weatherstrip,etc. Also stunk. There was no taming this guy so I opened the door. It ran full speed, never looked back as coyotes usually do. Wife still bitches about this one. I don't believe one can legally keep either a fox or coyote here, but I'm not certain. Take care, Mark

Yeah foxes as bloody pets we trained this one so we could sit back and have a beer and watch.


Jokes aside, here in Aus. foxes are a bloody problem and any fox I see is shot on sight, fox as a pet ya gotta be joking...

quote:

fox as a pet ya gotta be joking...

Why not? Been done plenty of times before I would imagine.

Just a Jack Russel with a fur coat as far as I can tell, they behave about the same, about the same body weight, eat about the same things, and bark a hell of a lot less and are way better looking into the deal.


Hey, I've shot plenty of them too, but I wouldn't write them off completely as a pet under the right circumstances, i.e. no different to a domestic dog if properly cared for.
I see no bad here.

I think to make a good "pet" out of one you need to do a bit of selective breeding. You could strike a freak that will tame easy and if it was a vixen that would be a start. The average fox however would not tame well, if at all.

A wild dog/dingo would if you got it REAL early. I think that's because of its brain make up. Perhaps with it's bigger (different??) brain a dog is more likely to see the benifit in a human dog relationship. Which is probably why we have pet dogs and not pet foxes

If you were inclined to keep a vixen, could you take it out and tie it to a tree when it came into season? Sit off a couple hundred metres...
Reckon that would work? Probably better than any audible call.

a mate of mine caught one in a cage trap 18 months ago, it was a wee cub then and he still has it now.

it was flighty to begin with but it has calmed down now. it lives in a kennel next to the other working dogs, i don't think he has let it out to play with the lurcher's. when he lets it out for a run around it is a little shy of strangers but it comes to him when he whistles it.

when you approach the kennel it will come up and have a sniff and a closer look. i reckon it will take a few years yet before it reaches anything resembling a proper pet.

one downer is that they really stink.

Here is one of my pet foxes, had a group of them living in my back yard for a few years. Sort of surprising to have Grey foxes in your backyard on a golf course lmao

Tried feeding him some .177 pellets, I think there may have been some viagra on the pellets because he is stiff as a board now