SILVER-FOX FARMING. 57 
TREATMENT OF DISEASE. 
Sanitation and the prevention of disease is a function of the fox 
rancher, but for the treatment of disease the services of a compe- 
tent veterinarian or specialist should be obtained. The diagnosis 
of disease and the administration of potent drugs call for special 
training and experience, and the fox rancher who undertakes un- 
aided the role of veterinarian is apt to come to grief. 
As soon as sickness appears on a ranch it is always advisable to 
employ a competent veterinarian. Infected foxes should be re- 
moved at once to clean and repeatedly disinfected quarters, pref- 
erably small pens (see p. 19, "Hospital and temporary pens"). 
The diet should be carefully regulated and should include milk and 
some cooked feed. The pens and dens in which the disease appeared 
should be thoroughly cleansed and disinfected, using air-slaked lime 
on the ground and one of the effective coal-tar disinfectants as a 
spray in the dens and nest boxes. Foxes should not be returned 
to these pens until it is reasonably certain that they are free from 
disease-producing organisms. 
Care should be taken to maintain a strict quarantine over dis- 
eased foxes, and the same attendant should not feed and care for 
both sick and healthy animals. Watch dogs should be confined 
until disease is stamped out, and dead animals should be burned 
at once or buried deep in the ground. 
Insanitary conditions cause a large percentage of young foxes to 
become heavily infested with parasites. Pups as a rule do not leave 
the den until 3 or 4 weeks of age and they often pick up infestation 
in the den itself. This indicates either that the eggs or larvae of 
insects are widely scattered over the pens and dens or that the 
parents themselves are infested. 
Fox ranchers have so universally accepted the idea that all pups 
have worms that it is a common practice to treat all that are 
between 3 and 4 weeks old for worms, whether this is necessary or 
not. In many instances it is necessary, although promiscuous dosing 
is a very bad practice, for young foxes often do not recover from 
the shock of the treatment. If proper precautions are taken to 
prevent infestation by treating the old foxes prior to the mating 
season and then placing the pups in clean surroundings for the 
first few months, the young ones will not be so liable to infestation, 
and treatment could be delayed until weaning time. 
Treatment for the removal of ascarids from foxes consists of the 
administration of a mixture of 1 part of oil of chenopodium and 
21 parts of castor oil at the rate of 1 cubic centimeter of the mixture 
per pound of weight, the dose being given to an animal that has 
fasted from 6 to 18 hours. 
For the removal of hookworms from foxes the treatment consists 
of the administration of chemically pure carbon tetrachloride in 
soft elastic globules at the rate of one-half cubic centimeter per 
5 pounds of weight, the drug being given to animals that have 
fasted from 12 to 18 hours. 
Because all effective anthelmintic drugs are potent poisons, they 
should never be used except by a competent veterinarian skilled in 
small-animal practice. 
