NEED LOCAL HELP? We have wildlife removal professionals servicing 95% of the USA. Click here to hire a local raccoon removal expert in your home town. Updated 2018. But read the below advice first!
Wildlife rehabilitators often deal with orphaned raccoons which they raise, feed, inoculate against diseases, and release in a safe wild area once they’re old and strong enough to fend for themselves, or find them a permanent safe place in a wildlife center. A wildlife rehabilitator will also tend to injured raccoons or treat them if they’re sick, releasing the animals into the wild or giving them over to a wildlife center once they’re back on their feet.
Wildlife rehabbers work closely with animal control professionals such as myself. The wildlife rehabilitator I work with and I, for example, have contact almost every week during raccoon season. But why does an animal control expert need a wildlife rehabber? Well, like I said, almost every week I receive a call from someone saying that they’ve eliminated a raccoon from their attic, but now they hear whining, crying and other noises. Surprise, surprise, it’s the litter that’s starving to death without their mother. So I go with my protection gear and my pillow case to extract the baby raccoons, and then I take them to the wildlife rehabber.
Giving orphan baby raccoons to a wildlife rehabilitator is the best solution for when the mother raccoon has been removed and can’t get back to its young. But it’s always best to not separate a mother from its young, and capture them together so that they have a better chance of survival during relocation.
You can prevent having orphan baby raccoons in your attic by paying special attention to two things. If you hire a wildlife removal company, make sure they are experienced, as well as licensed and registered. This way you can know for sure that they know what they’re doing, and won’t only trap the mother raccoon leaving the litter behind for you to deal with. Secondly, if you trapped a raccoon yourself, check for nipples. If you can see the nipples, just let it go back to its young – you’ll only have more problems if you leave the babies without their mother. You can find out on this website how you can find the baby raccoons and use them as bait to catch the mother, or you can go through the directory I’ve compiled to find a licensed wildlife removal company that will handle the situation for you.
If you’re interested in contacting a wildlife rehabilitation center, you can find the rehabber that’s closest to you by going on wildliferehabber.org.
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