Fox losing fur

[mbaldw]

Morning folks,

yesterday afternoon I caught sight of a fox that seemed to be losing its fur. It wasn't anything I'd seen before. I'm familiar with the typical symptoms of mange, but there was no obvious hair loss on the tail or around the haunches and no apparent hyperkeratosis. Instead, the fox had lost a reasonable amount of fur from its neck, around its shoulders and front legs (this area looked almost black, although I couldn't get close enough to tell if it was skin discolouration or very short fur). It was clearly causing fairly intense itching as I only watched it for about five minutes and it spend most of that time scratching. I know heavy flea burdens can cause fur loss and am wondering whether that's the most likely cause?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Marc.

[valleyforge]

Hi Marc,

Can't say that your description reminds me of anything I've seen (or read about) and of course it's not easy to form an opinion without actually seeing the problem.

As I'm sure you know, apart from annual moult (which should be beginning about now), patchy hair loss in foxes is most commonly attributable to either sarcoptic mange or to fungal ringworm infections ... neither of these would seem to be typical of what you observed though.

I wonder perhaps if the loss of fur has been caused by the fox scratching/biting to remove contamination by something sticky (or caustic) it has encountered ... something like sump oil, discarded cooking oil, or tar maybe?

The other possibility, which might explain the blackening of course, would be close exposure to fire.

Hope you are able to get a closer look, or perhaps some photos, next time it turns up.

[mbaldw]

Thanks for the info ValleyForge, if I see it again I'll try and get a closer look (it was on my lunch break so all I have with me usually is my mobile; not sure how much use photos on that would be for diagnosis).

Cheers,
Marc.