Pre-treating is not a great option. We use a medication called ivermectin and it is classified as a parasiticide. It kills external parasites like fleas, ticks, mites (including the ones that cause mange), and internal parasites that live in the gut and intestines as well. However, it kills parasites that are live and on the animal at the moment that the medicine is administered or ingested. It does not continue to kill these parasites for 7 days, 30 days, or any significant amount of time. It's not time delayed or slow released. The reality is that wild animals of all species are born with fleas, ticks, mites and various other internal and external parasites as a normal part of their wild lives. This is one of the main reasons that coyotes, foxes, raccoons, skunks, and many other fuzzy mammals spend more than half of their time each day/night devoted to grooming themselves and each other within their group, family or pack. It's only when the fox or coyote has some other adverse health event that prevents them from doing that normal routine of daily grooming that the mites get overwhelming and out of control that we see the hair loss, weight loss, skin reactions and infections and other effects of a mange infection. Sometimes this adverse health event is simply having a rough winter, a big litter, or even an injury that you can visibly see (like a limp or visible wound), but we're finding out more and more that the most common cause of these numerous, growing numbers of mange cases is due to the adverse effects of foxes and coyotes consuming poisoned prey animals like moles, mice, rats and other rodents. For example: A neighborhood clears a new area for more housing, including some woods, and mice, rats, moles, voles, and other rodents lose their habitat and start invading the space of humans nearby. Those humans start putting rat poison outside and the rodents eat it. They don't die instantly from eating poison. They wander off and get sick and lethargic hours later, when a fox or coyote, or hawk or owl, or even a neighborhood cat spots them. The predator animal sees it as good fortune to happen to find a slow, possibly injured or easy to catch prey animal, and they scoop up the rodent for a dinner to-go. At this point in time all of our native wildlife has become quite accustomed to ingesting rat poison from time to time, to the point that it rarely kills them anymore. However it does make them very ill temporarily, a lot like us when we have food poisoning. They experience extreme vomiting and diarrhea, lethargy, and just feel awful, and the first thing to go is all the time they're supposed to spend grooming themselves every day. Any den mates or family they live with see how sick they are, have no idea how they got sick, but know to keep their distance just in case it's something contagious and don’t help them with grooming. In the next 5-10 days of illness, the animal's normal amount of mites that may have always lived in their skin doubles and triples again and again and by the time they are feeling any better they have such an overwhelming mite infestation that they can't possibly catch up again. These are mites that burrow under the top layer of skin. It's not as easy as picking them off their skin. The itching is intense and they can't sleep or hunt and that slowly leads to starvation and/or hypothermia and eventually, death.

Partially, this is simply due to awareness. Now that you know foxes and coyotes are around your area, you are more apt to notice them in the woodline, and as you notice them more, you see more mange cases. In addition, you’re seeing more mange cases due to the usual human expansion that is always occurring everywhere. As more warehouses are built, housing, businesses, etc. the more these animals are pushed out of their own habitats and into ours. Sadly, every time a new construction site goes up they are surrounded by little black boxes of rat poison to control the rodent population for the humans planning to use that space. Recent studies show that the most common cause of these numerous, growing numbers of mange cases is due to the adverse effects of foxes and coyotes consuming poisoned prey animals like moles, mice, rats and other rodents. For example: A neighborhood clears a new area for more housing, including some woods, and mice, rats, moles, voles, and other rodents lose their habitat and start invading the space of humans nearby. Those humans start putting rat poison outside and the rodents eat it. They don't die instantly from eating poison. They wander off and get sick and lethargic hours later, when a fox or coyote, or hawk or owl, or even a neighborhood cat spots them. The predator animal sees it as good fortune to happen to find a slow, possibly injured or easy to catch prey animal, and they scoop up the rodent for dinner to-go. At this point in time all our native wildlife has become quite accustomed to ingesting rat poison from time to time, to the point that it rarely kills them anymore. However, it does make them very ill temporarily, a lot like us when we have food poisoning. They experience extreme vomiting and diarrhea, lethargy, and just feel awful, and the first thing to go is all the time they're supposed to spend grooming themselves every day. Any den mates or family they live with see how sick they are, have no idea how they got sick, but know how to keep their distance just in case it's something contagious. They don't help with grooming either. In the next 5-10 days of illness, the animal's normal amount of mites that may have always lived in their skin doubles and triples repeatedly and by the time they are feeling any better they have such an overwhelming mite infestation that they can't possibly catch up again. These are mites that burrow under the top layer of skin. It's not as easy as picking them off their skin. The itching is intense and they can't sleep or hunt because of it. Before long they are losing weight, losing fur, and dying.

Typically, we do NOT recommend the Mange by Mail Program for species other than foxes and coyotes. You can certainly order a Mange by Mail kit from us to treat a raccoon or squirrel that has mange. The only difference is the dosing schedule. However, you should know that it's not nearly as simple to diagnose a raccoon or squirrel with mange from afar as it is with a fox or coyote. When you see a fox or coyote in the wild losing hair, losing weight, and scratching constantly, it's nearly 100% of the time a mange infection. With a raccoon or squirrel, the same symptoms can mean a parasitic, fungal, or bacterial infection, or even a nutritional or congenital deficiency. It's also much easier to trap a raccoon or squirrel that is ill and bring it to a local rehabber for treatment. You can find a local rehabber near you by going to www.ahnow.org. Foxes and coyotes don't tolerate being held in captivity nearly as well, and they're nearly impossible to trap in the first place, which is why our Mange by Mail program exists for them specifically. If you don't have a local rehabber nearby who can help you trap and treat this animal, we are more than happy to help out by sending you a mange by mail kit, as long as you recognize that this is an exclusionary treatment - meaning that we are treating this animal for mange to rule it out as being the cause of the hair loss/weight loss/ illness that you are witnessing. If the treatment does not work, that simply means that this particular animal has some other cause for their symptoms and there are many possibilities. If the treatment doesn't work you will only have the option to trap them to get them tested to find out the cause and treat them after diagnosis. We simply want to avoid misleading anyone to think that ordering from us is a 'sure-thing' and will always work for these species. If you're comfortable with that, you are welcome to order a kit from us at any time. Please email us at mange@wildlifehotline.com for dosing instructions for these species.

Most likely, yes. Your fox looks like 99% of the foxes when they first get mange, with a bald opossum like tail. The itching is so bad that the hair loss begins where they can most easily reach to scratch, and the tail is usually the first spot. They don't have owners to scold them to stop scratching when they start to damage themselves so they cause their own wounds and hair loss at first from the scratching. In time, the hair loss and skin damage will spread and be caused more by the mites and the damage they do rather than the fox themselves. Sometimes it spreads quickly to the face from the tail scratching and this can impact their eyesight and impair their ability to hunt. Other times it simply moves up the body and begins causing more widespread hair loss, which causes even more itching and the cycle continues. Regardless, the tail being the major impact right now is a good sign. It means that we're still at the general beginning of the damage that mange causes and hopefully we can get him treated before he has to suffer through the more tortuous advanced symptoms. As long as you can get him to eat the bait food that you put out it will be easy to slip the medicine into the food. We will warn you, it is possible that you won't be able to get this fox to eat the food you put out right away. Our advice is to start trying to feed him before even worrying about the meds. That way you can figure out what he's willing to eat, and what times of day he looks for food at your place. Start with raw chicken or turkey and if he doesn't go for that, switch to hard boiled eggs with the shell cracked some to allow him to smell it and find it. (If there are cats around just stick to eggs) If he doesn't eat the food, it just means he isn't desperate enough to overcome his suspicion of us yet. Sadly, he will get worse and at some point his desperation will outweigh his fear. However, in the meantime it can be maddening to be forced to watch a fox come by every day, looking worse and worse, while you literally have the cure in your hand but you can't get him to eat it! Just keep trying once a week or so and in time he will go for it. The medicine we send is good for 2+ years and we send enough for about 10 doses, just in case.

Mange by Mail only works in specific scenarios where you see a mange infected animal near your home. It doesn't work if you saw him in the park or driving by somewhere unless you're willing to go back to that place and can get away with putting food out and waiting and watching to see if the fox/coyote comes back to get it, which would be tedious in most cases. Every once in a while there's an animal so miserable that you can literally drive past it and slow down and the animal will sit right there and stare at you, miserable, and allow you to throw some food right to it. In those cases, treatment is easy. One dose, one throw, and done. In other cases where the mangy animal is on private land, at your workplace, a public park, you'd have to find a place to hide food and somehow stake out the spot to see if the fox got it, over the course of days, then add meds to it days later and stake out the spot again. It's a lot. In those cases, you just have to hope that the animal is visiting someone nearby who lives there and that they know about our program and the options they have. Normally these are not opportunistic feeder animals who raid trash cans like raccoons, opossums and skunks. But when they have mange they're desperate for food and they will get much closer to humans to find it. Chances are good that the animal has found humans nearby and is being seen by those humans regularly. You could be proactive and check sites/apps like NextDoor, Neighbors by Ring doorbell, Citizen, Zingr, or even Facebook Groups that are called "YourCity" community pages. Just Google your town or neighborhood name or the town or neighborhood name near where you spotted the sick animal and look for a post about a sick animal, or an animal that people are asking to identify because they don't know what the heck it is, and share our info. We'll take it from there.