Five-day-old fox club handed into Bishop’s Stortford Veterinary Hospital recovering well after treatment for hypothermia and dehydration

A five-day-old fox cub that was mistaken for an abandoned kitten and taken to Bishop’s Stortford Veterinary Hospital is recovering well at an Essex animal rescue centre.

The tiny male was treated for hypothermia and dehydration by the team at the Rye Street hospital overnight on Saturday (March 8) after he was found by a member of the public in a garden.

The veterinary practice transferred him to South Essex Wildlife Hospital in Orsett, near Grays, the next day, where he was been placed with a small group of other cubs and is “doing well”.

A spokesperson for the Stortford vets said: “We were able to rehydrate him and treat for hypothermia. Nursing him overnight, we made sure he stayed nice and warm, and bottle-fed him as much as he wanted.

“The next morning we transferred him to South Essex Wildlife, where they’ll be able to give him the very best care that we as a companion vet practice don’t specialise in. We wish our little man all the best.”

South Essex Wildlife Hospital is currently caring for 20 to 30 fox cubs during what is now birthing season. Despite being regarded as extremely good mums, vixens can get parted from their litter, usually when their dens are disturbed.

“It’s people destroying their habitat when they get found,” said a centre spokeswoman. “You get nice weather like last weekend, people go out and start pulling down sheds or moving things in the garden and their habitats get disturbed.

“Sometimes the mum drops one while moving them but will come back for them. They’re really good parents as they only breed once a year, so it’s in their interests to look after them. And it’s important for the mum that they stay with her as she can get really ill with mastitis.”

In other circumstances, a litter might be left alone if its mother is injured or killed on the roads and the cubs venture out to find food.

At just a few days old, the cubs are not easily identifiable as foxes, but usually have a tiny white tip on their tails as a giveaway.

The rescued cub will stay at the sanctuary until about six months old before slowing being reintroduced into the wild.

Said the spokeswoman: “They start off in a small group with others, and those being hand-reared are taken home overnight by our volunteers, where they are fed every two hours.

“We wean them at about three to four weeks and from there move them out into a stable and then a bigger enclosure and then safe-release sites where they’re normally released in the autumn.

“We keep human contact to a minimum so they’re not excessively handled. They’re all wild to be released back to the wild.”

Vets’ advice on finding a fox cub

• Mother foxes, or vixens, are known to be extremely good, protective mothers. They will sometimes move their babies one by one, so if you find a little cub alone, consider that mum may be planning on coming back for them.

• Do not immediately go to touch or move the cub. Instead, wait to see if mum (or dad) returns. They are more likely to do this once it’s dark and quiet.

• If necessary, take cubs indoors to warm up and rehydrate (best to use a formula of Babydog milk) before putting them back outside, once it starts to get dark, to see if their parents return to them. Try to keep handling to a minimum and wear gloves if possible to reduce your scent getting on the cubs.

• When placing them where you found them, you can put them in a high-sided box (one that mum can reach into but babies can’t climb out of) with a heat pad or warm hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket.

• The best advice is always to call the experts. A wildlife rescue centre will be able to provide advice and information on what else to do if you find injured or orphaned wildlife