The Truth About Foxes and Lambs

Foxes and Lambs

Foxes and sheep1650413465469

Myth : Foxes are a problem to lambs.

Truth : This myth that has already been repeatedly debunked by scientific studies, which DEFRA accepts.

According to Defra (2004) :

95% – of lamb loses are due to : abortion and stillbirth; exposure and starvation; infectious disease and congenital defects; poor husbandry farming practices.

5% – are due to predatory killings from : Dogs, birds of prey and other wild animals.

A study of two Scottish hill farms found that less than 1% of lamb losses could be confidently attributed to fox predation.

Hunt supporters falsely claim that the fox population needs to be controlled because foxes kill lambs, however, they do have a hidden agenda for spreading this myth, they like to hunt them.

Lamb Mortality Rates

Foxes sometimes feed off carcasses let rotting in the fields by farmers, which could also explain why a fox seen to be feeding off or carrying a carcass could be wrongly blamed and mistaken for the actual killers.

A fox would have little chance of killing a healthy lamb being protected by the mother ewe, however, they may take a dead or sick lamb which has been abandoned by its mother.

Despite repeated requests for farmers, landowners and foxhunters to provide video evidence of a fox actually killing a lamb, there has been very little evidence provided to back up this myth claim that foxes are actually a problem to lambs.