The Wildlife Aid Foundation in Surrey has been using leading canine veterinary behaviour product Adaptil to help calm and reassure the fox cubs in its care – and it has produced spectacular results...
WAF is dedicated to the rescue, care and rehabilitation of sick, injured and orphaned wild animals. Established in 1980 by Simon Cowell MBE, the charity's veterinary hospital in Leatherhead deals with more than 20,000 wildlife emergencies every year.
Its policy is to return every patient to the wild once it has recovered. The Foundation's work is the focus of the popular TV series Wildlife SOS on Discovery Channel's 'Animal Planet'.
Lucy Kells, WAF’s hospital manager and a registered veterinary nurse, said: “Wild foxes will sometimes fight each other when they are introduced for the first time. Last year we had two young fox cubs that were six to seven weeks old.
"We wanted to put them together and we’d been donated some Adaptil Spray by a local veterinary practice, so we thought we’d give it a go. We’ve never seen anything like it in 30 years; as within seconds the fox cubs were curled up with each other and there was no fighting.
“Now we provide an Adaptil Diffuser to our volunteers who are feeding orphan cubs, and we’ve fitted diffusers in our orphan shed. We’ve not had one single fight and the cubs are less stressed when we clean their enclosures. It has been beyond dramatic!”
Following a visit and guided tour of WAF, Emma Jackson, product manager for Adaptil at Ceva Animal Health, commented, “This is a fantastic charity - the WAF staff and volunteers’ dedication, professionalism and unwavering ability to support so many animals with such limited resources, is outstanding. I was truly inspired and humbled by their hard work. As such I wanted to support them further by donating Adaptil diffusers and sprays to enable the charity to continue to use the product on both its fox cubs and adults.”
Adaptil is a synthetic version of the ‘dog appeasing pheromone’ that would naturally be released by the mother dog 2-3 days after birth to support her bond with her puppies and comfort and reassure them. Adaptilis scientifically proven to help comfort and reassure puppies and dogs at times of stress - particularly when encountering new experiences and unknown environments such as a new home, pets and people. It is available as a collar, diffuser and spray.
For information on Adaptil visit www.adaptil.co.uk and Wildlife Aid Foundation visit www.wildlifeaid.co.uk.
