Is this normal red fox behavior?

[mbhorse]

We have a red fox that has been hanging out in one of our pastures around dawn and after dusk. The other night it was in the front of our back pasture about 40 yards or so from the barn. I was standing just outside the barn aisle watching it and it was standing there watching me back. When I knelt down to get a better view between fence boards, it promptly sat down and kept looking at me. When my very large dog with a huge bark saw it and started barking her head off at the barn gate, the fox stood up, urinated, then just laid down facing us, watching.

Is this normal behavior, or should I worry about it being rabid (it never made a move to come closer to us)? Also, do foxes go after barn cats? We had one disappear around the same time we started seeing the fox, and my neighbor had one go missing not too long after that. I have zero knowledge or experience with foxes - except what I read in the Rita Mae Brown foxhunting series, which I absolutely love!

[LexInVA]

They will go after other animals if they can’t get food elsewhere. Usually though, it’s that three-day old bucket of fried chicken that’s been marinating in your garbage cans that they are after. If you have animals other than horses, it’s a likely bet they are attracted by a potential food source but in this case, I think they are just observing you. Or perhaps the fox was nonchalantly telling your dog to “piss off”. Hee hee.

[mbhorse]

[QUOTE=LexInVA;4541662]
Or perhaps the fox was nonchalantly telling your dog to “piss off”. Hee hee.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that was kind of what it looked like, along with a giant raspberry and a nana nana boo boo, I know you can’t get me :lol: I actually hooked my dog up to a cross tie because I was afraid she might jump the fence and go after the fox.

[Equibrit]

He was waiting for you to clear off, before checking out food windfalls. A friend of mine has a fox audience for training sessions.

[EmmyTheHemi]

Yes, fox can find barn cat tasty. I tracked a fox dragging one of my small adult barn kitties (no longer alive, by that point) back to a den a few years ago. Fresh snow makes many things clear…

Around here, however, the coyotes are a bigger threat.

[Beverley]

What you’re seeing is normal behavior. The fox that hung out at ‘my place’ in VA would routinely go mousing right next to the kennel full of labs next door- nonchalant in the face of 20 adult dogs barking and banging on the chain link fence 10 yards away.

My barn cats- even kittens- were never threatened. A hungry fox ‘will’ go after a small barn cat but would much prefer to just eat their cat food. Coyotes are another matter, they’ll affirmatively hunt and take cats routinely, in my experience.

[LexInVA]

If the red foxes in my neighborhood are hunting cats, they are sure not doing a good job of it.

[gloriginger]

Be careful with your dog. This summer there was a sleeping in the hay stack - my dog rolled where the fox was sleeping. She got a horrible case of mange from the fox- all over her belly- legs face - it has beena nightmare to clear up. Vet said it was a really bad year for mange- I guess the weather was just perfect for the stupid bugs to reproduce. One of the things this article says is that Foxes with mange will become unfearful of humans (thus the sleeping in the hay.)

http://www.nfws.org.uk/mange/mange02.htm

[ThreeFigs]

A couple of years ago, we had a family of foxes that used to line up and watch us ride in the evenings.

A Swift Fox at one place would sit and watch me. If I squatted down and stared back, he’d look away, but not move away. I could get pretty close before he’d move.

[My2cents]

We had a fox visitor one morning staking out a place under the bird feeders in the back yard, that is until our cat chased him out of the yard.

[cloudyandcallie]

@LexInVA;4541662

They will go after other animals if they can’t get food elsewhere. Usually though, it’s that three-day old bucket of fried chicken that’s been marinating in your garbage cans that they are after. If you have animals other than horses, it’s a likely bet they are attracted by a potential food source but in this case, I think they are just observing you. Or perhaps the fox was nonchalantly telling your dog to “piss off”. Hee hee.

Yeah Lex is back in form!
Foxes are diurnal and are hunting day and night. I was once riding Callie and saw in the middle of the day a red dog fox trotting towards us from the marshes behind SKidaway where i guess he’d been fishing. So I stopped and Callie and I watched as the fox came about 10 ft from us. He stopped, sat down, and scratched his ear, then got up, insolently looked at us, and trotted off into the woods. I whispered “Tally Ho” but Callie was insulted as she’d been a race horse and she wasn’t no “ho.”:lol:
I wonder if OP’s fox was marking his territory for the dog to see, or just insulting all of y’all?:lol:

Foxes are vectors for rabies, but they are as likely to have “dumb rabies” as to attack, and rabies tends to run in about 5 yr cycles thru their population as it does in raccoons down here. If OP can trap him and get a vet to give him a tranq and then a rabies shot (a distemper shot would be good also as they are canids and get distemper and die too.) and then turn him back out, the fox will eat all the mice and rabbits around.
At one barn, a dog fox was being fed grits and gravy by a guy who lived in a little camper there. He took lots of pictures of the fox with his whiskers covered in grits and gravy. Later the fox brought his vixen and their 2 children up for dinner. Better than eating the Canada geese who lived there on the pond.

I’ve never heard of a fox bothering an adult cat.

[wateryglen]

Normal!!

Yup normal! They are intensely curious and watch our routines and act accordingly. I had one that’d wait till I finished the evening chores before he came into the barn to mouse. He’d just sit on the hill & wait. Yawn, scratch& sit & watch. Also have had them sit & watch my chickens. I wonder what they were thinking?!!! :winkgrin:

We’ve covered this subject a lot onthis forum so do a search and you can learn more! Fascinating subject!

[LexInVA]

Imagine what you could see if you could attach a camera to one of those little critters.

[headsupheelsdown]

Red Fox den in front of my old barn

We had a red fox move in this summer south of an old red barn we have, it appears to have dug a den under the concrete of an old cattle feed lot, along the edge of our hay field.

Lots of people have told us that they are real pests and we should shoot it.

I just feel that as long as it doesn’t eat my cats or tangle with the dog, it should just stay. I really feel kind of honored.

[ThreeFigs]

I doubt they are a threat to most cats. Kittens, maybe. Foxes eat rodents, so there’s an up side to having them around. Plus, they’re cute as all get out. When I was a kid, I wanted one for a pet.

I understand their dens are really stinky, though, from all the dead stuff they leave lying around. My cousin the rancher had a family of red foxes living in his barnyard. We enjoyed watching them in the evenings. By that time, he had no livestock left on the place, so there was nothing they could harm, like chickens, but they were heck on the rodents!

[AKB]

Our neighbors have a fox den. One of the foxes from the den hunts our barn nightly. We have not had a rat or mouse since she graciously included us in her hunting area. The fox does have a strange liking for dog toys. Last summer, our neighbors raided the fox den, then walked through the neighborhood, returning chew toys, balls, and bell boots to various neighbor dogs and horses.

We love having foxes in our neighborhood. They are intelligent, shy, beautiful, rodent eradicators.

[Outfxed]

This past summer, we had a vixen make her den and raise 5 cubs under our garden shed not 30 ft. from our back deck. While the cubs were slightly more cautious than their mom, we routinely sat on the deck, watching and laughing at their antics. Mom would casually lie outside the “den”, keeping an eye on the kids, completely ignoring us or the two adult dogs we had. I was able to get some great photos of the family before they moved off on their own. We still occasionally put catfood out under the driveway culvert for the two youngsters who we see on and off.

[WNT]

We have one that periodically shows up and chows down on the feed the field-board horses drop. I’ve seen him a couple times sitting at the edge of the brush along the creek, watching while I did chores and turned out.

Another friend had a den near her riding ring and the pups would sit and watch her ride.

[Big_Tag]

True Story…

Several years ago we could hear a lot of yipping and carrying on around daybreak at my home (where I grew up). One morning it was particularly loud and obviously right in the backyard, and it was light enough, looked outside and saw a little red fox (juvenile, probably) trotting/cavorting around and not 4 ft in front of him, our BIG cat, (15-16lbs) trotting along. I have no idea what they were up to. The fox looked to be in “play” mode. The cat seemed slightly annoyed, but not enough to do anything and I would imagine this wasn’t a new occurrence. If I remember right, the fox was not any bigger than the cat…I would think it would take a heck of a fox and a very frail cat to be worried about it.

ETA: There was also one who would hang out in the shed in the field with my gelding at a different farm… I’d go out to feed him in the morning and get scared to death when the little fox would bound out of the hay! Horse never seemed bothered by it in the least.

[LookinForSpace]

The fox urinating was marking territory and asserting dominance over your barking dog. Everything sounds like normal behavior to me. You want to avoid a fox that shows no fear of humans or other animals, approaches instead of avoiding or maintaining a respectful distance, or behaves oddly.

@cloudyandcallie;4542276

If OP can trap him and get a vet to give him a tranq and then a rabies shot (a distemper shot would be good also as they are canids and get distemper and die too.) and then turn him back out, the fox will eat all the mice and rabbits around.

As far as the rabies goes, isn’t there a type of vaccine that can be placed in bait and left out for the fox so that the OP wouldn’t need to try and trap the animal? If so, wouldn’t it be a good thing to encourage in general? Anyone know whether/how it’s available? Possibly through animal control or county extension offices?

Rabies is a serious problem and I wish that local counties took a bit more proactive stance on controlling it rather than simply responding when someone reports an obviously rabid animal. Bait containing rabies vaccine sounds like the smart way to go to me. :yes: