FUR-FARMING IN CANADA 39 
food should be given. When the mother appears after the young are 
born, she should be fed well several times a day with meat, eggs, fresh 
new milk, meat broth, well-cooked oatmeal and other appetizing and 
varied foods, while a supply of clean, wholesome water in a clean 
trough should be constantly available. Live rabbits and poultry, 
squirrel and other game may be used to give variety to the mother’s 
ration. 
Despite the assertions of many experienced breeders that 
Gaal feeding is the most difficult of all operations in fox 
s ranching, very little evidence was found to comfirm this 
opinion. Few cases of failure due to bad dieting were noted. It is 
not difficult to keep foxes alive in captivity and, usually, the cause of 
nearly every loss can be traced. Occasionally mature foxes die sud- 
denly and no satisfactory cause of death can be found, even though 
post-mortem examinations have been carefully performed by qualified 
operators. The proportion of deaths, however, is low, only four being 
reported in Prince Edward Island in 1912, though probably more 
took place. 
In most cases, lack of success may be attributed to an inexpe- 
rienced keeper. When men who have never fed even a horse or cow, 
attempt to rear foxes, they may keep them alive, and may rear a 
few young, but the probability of failure is great. The failures are 
usually made in feeding to maintain good breeding condition, and in 
the care and feeding at the critical period of whelping and rearing the 
young. The keeper’s own character and disposition will have much to 
do with the success with shy and nervous foxes at this period. A good 
manager is always studying his animals at the breeding season and he 
carefully notes the dates of mating and whelping. He treats each pair 
according to their dispositions. In some cases he separates the male 
and female before whelping and, in other cases, he leaves them to- 
gether. He must be observant, resourceful and faithful, for he is dealing 
with animals which have had only several generations of domestic 
breeding. 
The critical period of each year in breeding foxes is 
aka and = between the dates January 1 and June 30. At this time 
estation : 
as the wild nature of some of the foxes renders them 
exceedingly sensitive to strange sights, noises and smells, all ranches 
are closed to every one but the keepers. The keeper usually wears the 
Same overcoat when about the pens. All domestic animals are kept 
at a distance from even the outer fence. Strangers are warned not to 
approach the ranch premises on pain of being fined for trespass. In 
