The Cordova daily times., 1923-04-09
Feeding Blue Foxes

rendering it unfit for food for any other fox.
 If you are a fox farmer you will know the location of every den on your islands. At this season of the year, feed as nearly as possible in as many different places as you have dens; If you have twenty dens on your island feed each den separately at a point on the beach not closer than 100 feet from the den. Often times conditions are such that you cannot land at that many different places with your feed dory. Try to have enough feeding places that no more than three dens are fed at one feeding place. If you are feed ing three pairs at one place, and one at another, feed three times as much feed where the three pairs are feed ing as where the one pair are feed- ing. The observant farmer will know just about the amount required at the different feeding places by the amount consumed. Do not make the grave error that so many have made in the past, of feeding at or near the keepers house only, and leaving the rest of the island to it's fate.
 If you follow this rule of feeding, several pairs of foxes near the keep CTS house will do we'll, and increase wonderfully, the best fighters will move close to the one food supply, and fight and whip the weaker ones away to portions of the islands where there is a scarcity of food.
 | All kinds of raw food such a hali- but heads, salmon heads, seal meat, etc., should be chopped up in pieces about two inches square. If they are left in large chunks, or whole, the foxes cannot carry them conven- iently to their dens. Sharks, crabs (cracked), dogfish, and octupus are splendid food for foxes; cut them up in small chunks and feed at any season of the year.
 Feed cooked food one day and raw food the next day; blue foxes need a variety of food; they soon become tired of a restricted diet, the same as man or any other animal. Foxes need ashes and charcoal; they get from them mineral salts that they get from no other source. The trap per knows that the campfire ashes are no sooner cold than the fox is there making tracks in them. I have seen drift logs, "especially cotton wood," that have been burned in driftwood fires along the beach where the burned portion of charcoal was entirely gnawed off by the blue foxes.
 I advise every island farmer to build a good big fire of alder, cotton wood, or willow, at or near every feeding place, at least two or three CllllSS ySdl, dlI IohSo Ol ehiiy oPoSiSS in captivity should have supply of dry, clean wood ashes and char coal in a covered box, with a hole in the side Oarge enough for him to get his head in and out of), in the enclosure in which he is confined at all times; another pile in some dry portion of the pen for him to dig in and roll in is all important.
 The blue fox farmer should collect every deer skin that he can get hold of, and after chopping it up on the end of a block with an ax in fine pieces, it should be distributed among the foxes in the cooked food, and in pieces an inch or two square (dry), to the various dens. It is just as important for fox to have bird feathers, or hair, to assist in the process of digestion, as it is for a chicken or grouse to have sand or gravel in his gizzard or stomach.
 Blue foxes in captivity in pens need and require the same kind of food as above mentioned. All feed cans should be thoroughly boiled or sterilized at least three times per week.