Running a week long sale on Marble wallhangers
Arctic Marble fox softmount (€730 on my website)
Marble raccoondog softmount (€1250 on my website)
Payment plans are also available!
Some of the mountable pelts I’ve had on my website over the last weeks (link in bio)
heraldic beasts
Hi I'm the anon who asked all those fur farm questions! Thanks for taking the time to answer, it was helpful. ❤️
Always happy to help!
Hi, I have some fur farm questions if you don't mind answering.
I've seen you mention that Sapphire is questionable. Why is that? Is it bc of the bleeding and CHS? If so, is Mansfield's Pearl also questionable to breed? And can CHS or bleeding issues be bred out or are they inherently part of the color?
On that note, do you have information on other color mutations that are linked to health issues?
Lastly, how does one get into fur farming? It seems really expensive to set up and buy all the foxes, and I struggle to find fur farms to follow online bc of how taboo it is let alone finding farms to buy live stock from, especially of rare mutations. Is finding farms to buy from more of a word of mouth + trust thing? And is mentorship of new farmers a thing or is fur farming too competitive for established farmers to want to do that?
Bonus: feel free to talk about your favorite mutations or anything else you wanna share.
Hi!
Yes Sapphires seem to all carry genetic illnesses. Some look to be only mildly affected, I’ve been following a few foxes friends of me carefully bred after they discovered some of their Pearls are Mansfield Pearls. So far the animals look to be doing ok, so it’s surely not a death sentence.
However I fear not all farms will be so careful about their breeding or using unhealthy animals because they want to get that special color. You’ve probably seen or heard about Mouse, the Sapphire fox Save a Fox bought from Northern Fox and Fur (a fur farm) several years ago.
Sadly Mouse did have severe CHS and had to be euthanised. There are very strong suspicions the farm bred “special needs” animals so the rescue could profit from the sob stories. Eventually Save a Fox bought out the whole farm. As of today it’s still about half filled with foxes because they can’t place the animals anywhere. Every rescue is full.
Mansfield Pearl alters the way in which blood behaves, foxes of this color seem very prone to excessive bleeding. I acquired this female Pearl Cross (suspected Mansfield Pearl Cross) “secondhand” a few years ago from the US. From what I see in the picture, it’s not a place I want to support. However this girl had already been culled for killing her whole litter of pups. When my tanner skinned the fox, they found that the bones were super weak and easy to snap. The skin had an unusual amount of bloodvessels and also the gums and teeth were quite funky. I’m still waiting for the cleaned skull.
In red foxes there’s not that many bad mutations luckily. Pale eyed foxes do experience sensitivity to the sun, we’ve seen them squint in direct sunlight. Mixing Whitemark/Ringneck/Platinum/Georgian (Snow) creates a lethal effect in homozygous form. Platinums can be anemic but it does seem to be worse in certain breeding lines than others. There’s probably others I’m forgetting but sadly there’s not much research being done anymore.
Finding a farm to work with is very hard nowadays. I somehow got myself a contact 5-6 years ago and it’s snowballed from there. The number of farms is very low now though, many of my own contacts have decided to stop farming because it’s essentially two full time jobs for the pay of half a job.
At least here in Europe it’s pretty much impossible to start up your own farm unless you have serious cash. No bank will want to provide you a loan because there’s little money to be made in the industry. Mutation foxes are very rare, most of what is produced is mink fur, arctic fox fur (‘bluefox’) and some raccoondog fur. You’ll find some Silver and Gold fox, but even those pelts are currently being sold in bulk at rock bottom prices to overseas buyers.
A picture of a Smokey Platinum pup for those who read this whole thing lol. This is a newer mutation for us, last year we had one male and this pup is one of his. Can you see the differences between this cage vs the one the female Pearl Cross lived in (she could barely turn around)? The cage in the background gives a better view of the size. There is also a nest box attached.
Species: Red Fox (Vuples Vulpes)
Color Morph: Cherry Red (AABB)
Possible in nature: Yes
Cherry Red is just a variation of the natural red fox color. The easiest way to identify a cherry red fox is the deep red color and the lack of white fur in the inner ear.
Fun fact: the cherry red colour was introduced into farm foxes from just 13 individuals captured in Kamchatka, Russia, in 1988, where the colour occurs naturally:
"Breeding of a red fox started in 1970 after capturing some local red foxes. In 1975 it was crossed with Yakutian red foxes to combine low-quality color and a lot of silver, dull color, low very soft hair. Hybrids derived from the local red fox greatly surpassed them in all respects. 13 red foxes were imported from Kamchatka in 1988. They have bright saturated colors. In 2004 animals were introduced from, altogether 146 animals (120 females, 26 males) with a dark red color with almost no silver. This type was established from the population of wild Kamchatka red fox at the fur farms in Vyatka and approved in 1988.
In 2005 6 males were brought from Finland: 3 red gold, 2 selected red American, 1 red European type. Combining these types, we had a herd of red foxes characterized by strong bones, thick and lush bright red saturated color with cherry hue with minimally amount of silver. While working with these animals revealed that they are more responsive and tame when dealing with humans and showing their delight with wag tail and giving sounds to express their mood. Hence the animals in this group are most popular among people who want to keep at home an exotic animal like a fox"
Here's some examples of wild Kamchatka foxes with the cherry red colouring:
In captivity cherry reds are still only found in Russian, Finnish and some other European farm stock. You wont find true cherry reds being bred in North America.
Species: Red Fox (Vuples Vulpes)
Color Morph: Whitemark (AABBWw, AABbWw or AAbbWw)
Possible in nature: No
Technically whitemark/piebald exists in wild foxes, both naturally occurring and as a result of hybridisation between farm and wild foxes. Although the markings usually wont be as large and predictable as in farmed foxes, white on the feet, legs, face and neck is fairly common in wild foxes. Here's a few examples of wild foxes with whitemark patterns:
UK:
Finland:
USA and Canada:
Some more examples from the UK and Ireland under the cut of deceased foxes. Nothing too graphic but don't look if you don't want to see dead animals
Taxidermy foxes at the State Darwin Museum in Moscow, showing the variety of colors created through captive breeding.
(via Evrim Çalışkanları)
Relevant to my interests.
I want to have this in the future 😂
sorry if this has already been asked but i was wondering how to tell apart an amber fox from a pastel fox. i know that region plays a part in it but im still very confused lol. also your blog is very cool :)
I’ve not been active on Tumblr anymore, but if anyone has questions I’ll try to answer them!
Here is a comparison of the two mutations. Left being a Polish Pastel and right being an Amber.
Polish Pastel is its own brown mutation, it’s not a mix. It has a medium warm brown tone. Amber is a Pearl Burgundy and is a mixed type (Pearl x Burgundy). Ambers are always a much lighter brown color and almost have a yellow undertone to the fur, especially around the tail.
Polish Pastel is a color bred pretty much exclusively in Europe while Amber is bred in Europe, the US and Canada. Neither of the two colors are common anymore due to the extreme decline in breeding of mutation foxes.
Do you sell only tails or is it the whole thing?
I sell both!
I haven’t been active here at all, I’m sorry! Been trying to lower my pelt stock to manageable numbers with a discount on craft grade pelts.
do you sell raccoon tails? Or just any striped ones, I looked on your website and I didn't see any.
I only have fox tails and I’ve only stocked them very recently. They aren’t on my website because I haven’t had the time to adjust the shipping calculations yet.
Hello, I was wondering if you could help me identify one of my pelts. It’s the one with the pink above it. It was bought as a palomino frost fox but it’s obviously a red fox and not a hybrid as it should be. In person it’s grey with a lavender tint. Thank you!!
Hi, you’re right thinking this is not a hybrid. It’s ofcourse a bit hard to determine color from a picture but this guy looks like a Fawn Glow 😊
Hi! I hope this ask reaches you okay. I've been doing some research on Red Fox color morphs and am hoping you might be able to clarify a bit; I want to strictly look at non-hybrid fox morphs, but keep getting some of the names confused with hybrid names. Is "Fawn Light" only a hybrid color morph, or is it possible in non-hybrid lines? I had some confusion with "Gold Sapphire" as well, but it seems there's both a hybrid and a non-hybrid version? Thank you for your time!
I understand the confusion.
Fawn Light is a hybrid, often confused with Fawn Glow (= Pearl Colicott) which is used to create Fawn Light.
Gold Sapphire is also a hybrid but people seem to use it for Gold x Sapphire mixes as well. Haven’t seen a true red type Gold Sapphire as they are extremely rare so I’m sure people slap this label on any Pearl looking fox they can find.
Some more pictures of the tanuki pup. Adult tanuki not for sale.