20 



farmers' BULLETIN 795. 



PROPAGATION. 



Foxes mate in February or March. The mating season is often 

 revealed by a brownish discharge and may last anywhere from a 

 few hours to two or three days. The gestation period is about 51 

 days. The size of litters ranges from one to nine, the average being 

 about four. Each male remains faithful to the vixen of his choice 

 and is an exemplary husband and father. During the first few days 

 after the cubs are born the vixen remains in the den. Meanwhile 

 her mate brings her food and remains constantly in the vicinity to 

 apprise her by warning barks if an enemy approaches. Attempts 

 have been made by fox breeders to mate one male with several fe- 

 males in the same season, but, as a rule, the results have not been 

 encouraging. 



Males are removed from the breeding yards for a part of each year, 

 the length of their exile depending upon the relations of the pair. 

 If they are quarrelsome, it is best to separate them soon after the 

 female becomes pregnant. If, on the contrary, they agree and show 

 attachment to each other, it is wise to keep them together until the 

 cubs are four weeks old, but after that the male is likely to bite them 

 during scrambles for food at meal times. While sequestered, the 

 males are usually kept in small pens which may adjoin the breeding 

 yards, as shown in figures 13 and 14, or removed to a separate 

 inclosure, where they may be allowed to run together in a large 

 yard or confined in individual pens. Because of their inclination to 

 fight, individual pens are preferable. 



The reproductive period in foxes is about 10 years. Approxi- 

 mately 50 per cent of the females in domestication breed each year, 

 and the aggregate increase is not far from 100 per cent for the total 

 stock on ranches. Failure to breed is attributable to a variety of 

 causes, among which are sterility, injuries, worry, and mismating. 

 Females barren for two years in succession frequently become pro- 

 ductive on being mated to a different male. Prolific vixens, run down 

 by several litters in succession, sometimes skip a year in which to 

 recuperate. 



The excitable disposition of foxes is one of their most troublesome 

 characteristics, and no opportunit}* should be lost to abate it. In 

 the breeding season it is very essential that nothing shall occur to 

 make them apprehensive. A nervous vixen is likely to refuse the 

 attentions of her mate, or to injure herself and cause abortion, or, 

 what is still more probable, to destroy her young soon after they 

 are born, by neglect, or by taking them from the warm den and 

 carrying them about the yard in search of another hiding place. In 

 her extreme anxiety she looses all her instinctive prudence. She 

 becomes essentially insane, and only the closest attention on the part 

 of her keeper can save her cubs. 



