Blue foxes’ (Alopex lagopus) preferences between earth floor and wire mesh floor

Blue foxes (Alopex lagopus) with access to both earth floor and wire mesh floor have shown a preference, measured as time allocation, for a wire mesh floor. However, in these earlier studies there have been several confounding factors (e.g. with the size and elevation of the floors) that were controlled for in the present preference experiment. In addition to the blue foxes’ preference, we measured the foxes’ behaviour both on an earth floor and a wire mesh floor, and evaluated the effects of an earth floor deprivation on the behaviour of the foxes. From the cubs’ age of 4 weeks (July), 16 fox families (vixen and cubs) were housed in an outdoor fur animal shed in cage systems consisting of two fox cages. At the cubs’ age of 8 weeks, the cubs were separated from their mother and thereafter only the experimental male–female sibling pairs were housed in the experimental cages until December. In the eight pairs of the control group, there was a wire mesh floor in both cages, whereas in the eight pairs of the earth group, there was a wire mesh floor in one cage and a 30–40 cm deep earth floor in the other cage. The behaviour and locations of the foxes’ were recorded using instantaneous sampling (with a sampling interval of 5 min) for 24 h five times, i.e. in September just before an earth floor deprivation (SEP or BDE), on the 9th day of the 14-day deprivation (DEP), on the 1st day after the deprivation (ADE), in October (OCT) and in December (DEC). The recordings SEP, OCT and DEC were interpreted as a preference setup and, the recordings BDE, DEP and ADE were interpreted as a deprivation setup. The control group used both available cages equally, whereas the earth group used the wire mesh cage more than the earth floor cage for both resting and activity. The earth group showed less oral stereotypic activity than the control group. A rebound effect in digging and sniffing on sand was observed after the earth floor deprivation in the earth group. The results confirm the earlier findings that farm born blue foxes prefer a wire mesh floor to earth floor when measured as time allocation. However, farmed foxes with early experience of an earth floor may value the behaviours enabled by the presence of an earth floor.