Red fox sightings are more frequent this time of year. This is due to the fact that fox kits have been recently born and the adult foxes are busy providing food for their young.

For the red fox, small mammals and rabbits are a main source of food, but what predator could resist an easy chicken dinner?

Everyone loves to eat chicken – human and animal alike. Folks who have chickens need to take precautions to “predator proof” their chicken coops and runs. If your chickens go missing, don’t blame the fox for doing what his instincts dictate. Rather, check your security measures.

Making sure that you have surrounded your chicken coop and runs with welded wire fencing, level to the ground, will prevent foxes from burrowing underneath and making short work of any occupants of your chicken yard.

Using galvanized hardware cloth around the chicken run and over any windows and ventilation openings will keep chickens much safer than using chicken wire.

The red fox is common throughout Illinois. Smaller than a coyote, with that enviable red coat of theirs, complete with velvety black feet and a white-tipped tail, the red fox is indeed a handsome fellow.

Weighing between 7 and 15 pounds, the red fox has five toes on their front feet and four toes on their back feet. Their tracks very much resemble those of a coyote or dog – only smaller. If a fox were to stand next to a full grown human, they would be less than knee high.

Foxes can run upwards of 30 miles an hour for short distances, an advantage for a predator who hunts small prey such as rabbits.

The red fox is monogamous and both parents work together to feed their litter of kits. Making use of an old woodchuck den is something that a family of foxes tend to do.

Did you know that foxes provide toys for their kits? Yes, indeed. Very often, small bones are left at the entrance of the fox den to serve as entertainment for the young ones!

After about 7 months, the kits are grown and ready to venture off on their own. Female kits tend to stay close to the area where they were born. Make kits can venture as far away as 150 miles.

Red foxes eat a variety of different things, which needs to include meat. They will eat different fruits, grasses and even corn in addition to rabbits, squirrels and mice. Crayfish, caterpillars, crickets and other insects make up about 25% of the fox diet.

Foxes will hunt and save some of its food for later in a special place called a “cache”. This is a hidden place that the fox will remember to go back to later to retrieve the food stashed there.

The red fox is a species protected as a furbearer and a beautiful part of our Illinois ecosystem, aiding in the balance of the small mammal population.