Hi, everyone. And welcome to this webinar on the veterinary treatment of foxes, badgers and otters. So, of course, from a taxonomic point of view, that's a bit of a weird bunch of things.
But the reason I put together these three species is the British wildlife that you might relatively commonly see. But also there are things that people tend to think are a bit dog like, so that's reason to maybe bring them together during this webinar. We're gonna talk a little bit about the collagen biology of these species that's relevant to your veterinary assessment and treatment of them.
We'll cover some of the main reasons that, you'll see them some of the legal and regulatory things, and then we'll move on to how you provide first aid and emergency care. Do the basic things like take blood to euthanase them as required, and we'll go through some of the common conditions that you'll see in each species at the end. I'll also do a little bit on dealing with neonates and juveniles of these species, so first up are foxes.
So in the UK, we have just one species of fox, which is a red fox full piece B piece. And these are quite rightly dog like in terms of their basic anatomy and physiology. The one thing I'd say is that they're quite lightweight, compared with dogs.
And I've seen a lot of people get anaesthetic wrong because of that. So that would be my first thing to say to, to watch out for the second thing is, they are obviously wild animals. But the wild animals that live in two really distinct populations, rural foxes tend to be very nervous, very wild, whereas foxes obviously become a lot more used to people and therefore their behaviour around you and the behaviour in the practise can be really different.
Foxes usually live in family groups, who is generally a dominant, dog and vixen. And cubs are normally born in spring, often in urban areas or under buildings. Things like that, they're a bit of a Marmite species.
Some people really love them and encourage them in their gardens. And that's what these pictures on the right are illustrating. Whereas for other people, they're the worst of the pest species and the way they're protected or not legally really impacts on that as well.
Certainly, rural foxes in captivity can be really stressy patients. They feel like they're on a mission to try and kill themselves in captivity. They'll, self-harm, anything you leave lying around that they can trap themselves in.
They'll manage to do that. Whereas urban foxes will often sit in a dog bed and behave very like a domestic dog patient. I've already mentioned legal protection, and Fox is really not protected.
Unlike most of our other wildlife, where we've got some sort of protection of them and their habitats with foxes, it's absolutely legal to kill them in in various, ways. And I'll come on to talking about snares and the changes in legislation around that a little bit later. They're considered a pest species by very many people, but this doesn't allow us to abuse them.
They're still protected under the Animal Welfare Act, which means that we're not allowed to do things to them that really severely compromise their welfare. Very frighteningly. There's been a bit of a trend in recent years to keep them as pets, and I would really stress, despite what these pictures show These are actually very wild animals and should be treated as such for their own welfare as well as for our safety.
So the main reasons we see them in bed so usually when they've come into contact with man and in traumatic episodes, or they've been poisoned. Probably one of the most common clinical conditions we see is sarcoptic mange alongside a variety of neurological problems toxoplasmosis, dopy, fox syndrome. And I'll go on and talk about these.
We do also often see orphan cubs, which are sometimes presented as being puppies. And then there's a whole load of random, naturally and unnaturally occurring conditions as well. So history taking this is really the same for all the species I'm gonna talk about in this webinar.
And I think my main point is, take some history. You only know the history is not useful when you take it and you don't get any or it's a bit meaningless, but sometimes you can get really extensive history. And that's particularly the case for urban foxes.
I get quite a lot of video and trail footage. from, both badgers and foxes these days and that can be incredibly useful in in helping people deal with these animals the person who picks up the fox or other wild animals, the last person to see it in the wild. Once it's in captivity, its behaviour will be really different.
Assessing things like behaviour is really important in order to make capture a safe thing for the people involved and also for the animal, so it doesn't do itself any more harm. There's also quite a bit of information to be gathered as part of the capture. How much blood is there?
Is the animal seeing you? Is it moving around normally, those sorts of things and really importantly, we need to know exactly where the animal was found and increasingly, what three words is probably the to go for thing to do this. Remember, these and badgers and otters are big, sometimes very powerful wild animals, and we shouldn't be getting the members of the public to pick them up.
I know recently some of the charities have restricted their pickup service, but these are not animals that we should be telling the public to get. We should either be going out and getting them ourselves or more appropriate trying to use a wildlife centre to do that. So basics with foxes, you can scruff them, but obviously be really confident.
If you're going to do that, they do have really good scruffs so you can genuinely get hold of them by a good handful of scruff and control them. But be you need to make that move quite confidently. Once you've got them scruff, you can get a Baskerville or other muscle on very easily, and that's that's really useful to do.
There are quite a lot of zoonosis and with any wild animal, I would say when you first handle that animal, you should be wearing gloves. And with foxes, I would make that long gloves. So you haven't got a gap between your sleeve and the glove, as is nicely illustrated in that first picture because there is a sarcoptic mange risk.
So wear gloves all the time when you're dealing with them. IV is fairly straightforward. They're effectively dogs.
So jugular great for collecting blood. Cephalic really great for placing an IV for euthanasia, things like that. And remember, if somebody else has got, say, a heavy blanket over the Fox's head.
You might be able to get a test cenas for things like euthanasia, and that can be less stressful for the animal and really easy for you as a vet or veterinary nurse. Intramuscular injections again the same sites. We would tend to use things like lumbar muscles to give IM sedatives and subcut wherever you want.
But the scruffs the most obvious one. Remember, there's no exemption for anybody microchipping wildlife apart from vets and, registered veterinary nurses. And we need to be using the standard site for microchip placement, which in this case, is between the scapula.
Once foxes are eating, they'll take medication and food really well. If you want to keep that natural, then use the body cavity of a dead day or chick. So I always assume that all wild animals require some sort of fluid therapy because they are either shocked or dehydrated when they come in.
So what I would use with foxes is a 20 mil per kilogramme bolus. Then re evaluate, evaluate and repeat that as necessary. If the fox will let you keep it on a drip and a Baskerville can be really useful, then just go down to normal dog rates based on your Fox's body weight.
A lot of foxes will have painful conditions. And remember, wildlife's really good at hiding. The fact it's painful because it's not a great thing to show that you're painful when you're in the wild and we can use the same opioids as we do for dogs.
One of the things to remember with these is that sometimes the pure opioids are great, but they need repeating a bit more often, and that might be kind of not the best thing to do with wild animals. So start off with something like methadone. But then think, actually, would giving buprenorphine be OK from an analgesia perspective?
And it means I need to give it less often. Non steroidals are typically meloxicam or kroen. Probably meloxicam is the one we most, go for, because we can then use a nice, or a liquid product, really to look at foxes properly unless they're Mori, and then you're likely to be euthanizing them anyway.
You need to sedate or anaesthetize them. And remember, with all animals that you can use sedative or anaesthetic as a sort of stepping stone to euthanasia. So this teaches you to look at these animals really well to know what is normal.
And it also really buys in wildlife re habit because it makes it look like you're actually making an effort before you put the animal to sleep rather than just making a fairly snap decision, as I mentioned at the start, be really careful about the estimation of weight for foxes. That tail is all fluff and it can be really, really deceptive. So make sure you've got them, you know, on the scales get rehabbers to bring them in in a crush cage.
That you're able to, you know, the weight of already so you can calculate weights easily, and then your examination is really just head to toe a systematic examination and make sure you do everything. Don't concentrate on the obvious thing that's wrong. If there is something glaringly awful, that's likely to just be a reason for euthanasia.
But if you've not made that decision, then make sure that you do a full examination so you don't miss something which could be an issue later on. Behaviour can be really important with foxes, and if you are able to work with the wildlife rehab Centre. That has trail cameras or CCTV set up on pens that can be incredibly helpful.
Fox clubs are usually easier to examine than adults. You can do that relatively safely, just with some latex gloves, but don't assume they're normal. There's a whole variety of problems.
They'll get particularly neurological things, like hydrocephalus and also sometimes problems with their eyes. So really? Just make sure you know I if it's a rejected cop, that's often nature's casualty to go.
Looking for a reason why diagnostic tests in old wildlife might be really useful, but your best diagnostic aid is a good clinical examination. If you then feel you're likely to treat that animal, then go on and do some tests. And we can use all the same toys that we have in small animal practise when we're doing this.
But really think about whether or not doing those tests, spending your time in a wildlife charity's money on further investigations is actually gonna change your decision making. If you're looking just for a reason to put that animal to sleep, just put it to sleep. If you're going to do orthopaedic surgery, then, yeah, take really good x-rays.
You know you want sort of, right angle views. You want both joints involved? You want to be doing it properly.
In terms of bloods, foxes are probably the one species where you can run both haematology and biochemistry on your in-house analyzer. Run it on dog settings, but then get some good fox reference ranges either online or from the BS a B, a manual to interpret your results. When you're doing anything diagnostic with any wildlife.
Just think about disease control. So particularly if you're using things like an endoscope, be really careful that you're gonna be able to clean it adequately afterwards. So probably the most common reason we see foxes, is trauma and they get sort of shot and snared.
They get involved in road accidents. Sometimes, as with this X ray on the right, what we discover is actually a pre-existing condition. So this Fox has obviously been going around with this fracture for quite some time, and that leg was not the reason it came into captivity.
If you think there's cruelty involved, then report this to the RS PC A or the Scottish S PC A, because that can be a real problem with foxes. And then it's a combination of treating trauma like you would for dogs, so stabilise your casualty. First, if you think it's gonna be something that could be treated and then go on and do your diagnostics, so approach it like a RT, a cat with multiple injuries.
If it really looks like everything's so badly broken, then euthanase it or do a FOXO gramme X ray to confirm. You need to do that. But if it is something you think you're gonna go on and treat, then do some stabilisation with fluids.
Before you do a full general anaesthetic. Think about how old the fox is. If it's an old looking animal that's at the end of its normal lifespan, might have really warm, worn teeth.
It might be really skinny. Then it will be less appropriate. You doing any heroic surgery if it's relatively young fox with, say, a nice mid shaft fracture?
You might feel really differently about that. If you're a reasonable, orthopaedic surgeon, if we are gonna do orthopaedic surgery, we ideally want to be removing implants before release. It's not always possible cos sometimes a plate is the best way of fixing things, but external fixators are usually reasonably well tolerated, and they mean there's no risk with metal work going forwards.
The final thing I put there is to think about the temperament of the fox. As I've already suggested. Some are great in captivity and others are truly awful.
So if you know that that Fox is not gonna cope with captivity very well, then I would really be thinking about euthanasia at an early stage. So snaring, snaring snares have recently been banned in Wales last year and in Scotland in May of this year, so it's actually illegal to snare any animals, including foxes. Thankfully, in those countries in England and Northern Ireland, it's still legal to use snares.
But the snares have to be free running rather than self locking. That's a little bit of a misnomer, as even freerunning, snares become self locking once they get a bit of vegetation or hair or something tangled in them. We do also commonly see foxes that have got themselves trapped in other things, so I lock fencing, that sort of thing, and with all of these, you want to be trapping the fox with the snare or a bit of fence.
Rather than just releasing it if you release it, you don't know if it's gonna be OK, and it needs to be really well examined, including things that look in its mouth, where they might have broken teeth from trying to chew at the snare and where we just have, say, a visible, line, which I'll show you a bit more with badgers. Sometimes we'll see ischaemic necrosis afterwards, so it looks like not much of a wound, but it becomes a real mess over the next week. It's not legal for foxes to be poisoned because of the negative welfare impact.
So even though foxes can be shot quite legally, using something like a poison to kill them isn't legal and is clearly dangerous for other species. Poison can, of course, be accidental. Fox gets hold of something it shouldn't or it can be downright malicious.
If you've got concerns again, you want to be reporting this to the welfare organisations, but also maybe to local authorities. If it's a urban fox when you're treating poison, it's really like treating dogs and cats. So we're trying to use sort of symptomatic, treatments and specific antidotes.
You know, if you know what poison it is. There are a lot of infectious diseases in fo foxes that are also infectious to dogs. A lot of these are zoonotic.
So you want to be wearing really good P PE and also using appropriate disinfectants after you've, dealt with the fox some of the contact between pets and people and, foxes in urban environments is a potentially a real risk for disease transmission. As you'll know when you're thinking about worming dogs, some of these diseases we do vaccinate Fox cubs against. So here are the dog diseases infection can infectious canine, hepatitis, distemper, lepto, parvo and, of course, Rabies on mainland Europe.
These are the same causal agents as dogs, and the clinical signs are pretty much the same. One of the issues with these is even if we can make them better, we don't know what the state of shedding is gonna be going forward or what the long term organ damage will be. So we're not able to monitor these foxes in the way you would say monitor a puppy that had leptospirosis.
I would suggest these animals are euthanased, and some of the dog diseases are things, as have already said that we vaccinate focus cubs against. There's a whole variety of other viruses that have been found in foxes. Some are of clinical significance to the fox, some of significance for humans as well.
And some of them are associated with something called dopey fox syndrome, which I'll talk about a bit later. I put some references to some papers because there is some research work on this, and some of it's really quite detailed. Hydrocephalus is really common in Fox cubs and that skull zoning is not always seen very quickly, usually from about four weeks old, you'll begin to see some sort of changes, in the skull shape and some development of neurological problems.
The pits at the bottom are a fox on the left and also a calf. Just to show you the degree of cavitation that is caused with hydrocephalus, there's no way to treat these. They just need to be euthanased at first opportunity, particularly because people are usually hand raising them and get really attached to them.
There is some evidence that Logan viruses might be related to these cases, and that's of human health significance. Probably the most common clinical condition we've seen. Fox, as is sarcoptic mange.
And this is the same sarcoptic sarcoptic scab that we see in dogs. The distribution is usually the same starting on the head and the pressure points of the elbow hoc, and hip. But they really progresses so that you get this, you know, really thick scabby, horrible form that you can see, in both these pictures.
It's obviously a zoonotic disease. So you want to be taking really good precaution when you do it? There's real evidence that we get a a progression of this disease, depending on the immune response and some really good publications around this one of which is at the bottom there.
So your approach to main cases, some of them obviously just need to be euthanased straight away. If you are going to embark on treatment, then you want really good triage. So proper diagnosis of mane.
Sometimes ringworm can be a complicating factor, and you need to diagnose that, too, and you need to think about the success of treatment in that individual animal. Are you likely to get it better? Has it got anything else as an underlying problem?
I would say if in doubt euthanase, it's also important we think about the pot fox population because mange goes through populations and takes out the most vulnerable foxes. If we're constantly treating the ones that have got severe mange, we'll be doing this forever. So we really need to think about whether what we're doing is for welfare reason, in which case euthanasia is acceptable or if we're actually trying to treat what is a naturally occurring disease.
And again, there's some nice published work on this. It's also much easier for us to treat mange than it used to be, and that means that we can get these animals out quicker. Our typical treatment used to be to use some sort of averin.
I would use imec once a week for three weeks and then send the animals out on a spot on. But we've now obviously got, a long acting, version of, flu lander in the form of breo, which gives us 12 weeks cover, which means that if the Fox is responding pretty well. We can probably get it out a little bit quicker, and that can be really useful.
Supportive treatment is really important. There's a lot of chat about Homoeopathic treatments appearing to work really well with mange. I personally don't believe they do, but I think the support feeding that's being given can be really useful.
So when we've got low grain mange in urban populations, where people are perhaps feeding a group of foxes, sometimes just that support feeding can be enough for a natural immunity to overcome the mange foxes. As you know from your dog work, get a variety of ender parasites, surround worms, tape, worms and trematodes. There's very little evidence that many of these are a problem in the fox, but they can clearly be a problem both in domestic dogs and also in people we do routinely treat fox cubs for enter para sites.
But usually for fox adults, unless you're keeping in in captivity for a long time, is probably unnecessary to treat them. Toxoplasmosis is something that foxes are often talked about having it's a protozoal parasite with definitive hosa cats, and you'll know that it can affect, sheep, for example, causing abortion. There's various reports serologically of evidence in foxes in the UK much higher reports in mainland Europe.
But remember, this is just serology. The foxes have come into contact with toxo and generated immune response doesn't mean they've necessarily got a problem with it or, indeed are shedding it. Toxo infections are usually subclinical, and the evidence would suggest they're not usually significant alone in red foxes.
Clinical signs of incoordination of behaving abnormally towards people, lack of awareness of surroundings have all been described. And again, there's some literature based on this. What's probably more significant is toxoplasmosis is part of this syndrome called dopy Fox syndrome.
And there's this really good paper that has been published on this, which is looking at the significance of, toxoplasmosis alongside other things. Viral infections in in particular. And it seems to be that most dopy foxes do have toxo, but they also significantly have concurrent Serco virus infection.
In a way, all this is probably fairly irrelevant because these are really hard to diagnose and to treat these foxes, don't respond normally to people and to my opinion, probably should be euthanized. I don't think keeping them in long term captivity is the solution either. And it got real welfare issues associated with it.
Short term care of foxes. You can just keep them in your dog kennels. I would tend to put them in isolation, give them something to hide in.
And remember that the fox that comes in very debilitated hopefully will look a lot better after your fluid therapy. So you do still need to be able to catch it. They're easy to feed.
They eat dog food. Or you can go for more natural food. Such as dead day or tricks?
Or is it, a recently killed roadkill? Fox clubs come in quite often because they look a bit like chocolate Labrador puppies and they really their growth and development is very similar to puppies, so we can typically get them weaned from, about sort of 2.5 3 weeks old, which is a real sort of advantage in a rehab situation because they don't get too habituated.
Feeding them when they're younger than sort of three weeks old is just on a milk replacer, so poppy milk replacer is fine. And you're really feeding them in the same way. You would puppies, and you need to stimulate urination and defecation in the same way you would do that.
They need to be handed over to a wildlife centre really quickly. I think when individuals get involved in Mary in any of these animals, there's a real risk about them becoming imprinted and habituated. And we want to really avoid that, as I've already mentioned.
Certainly at Secret World Wildlife Rescue, we tend to use standard dog protocol for prophylactic care in Fox Cubs. So we worm them and we vaccinate them, according to a puppy protocol called. So we're now we're gonna move on to badgers.
And as I've only got a third of this webinar on badgers, we're gonna have to go through it quite quickly. Badgers are my main sort of area of interest. They're amazing animals, and it's really nice to have the opportunity to teach at least something about them.
So badgers live in social groups. These might be quite small, two or three animals, or they might be really big groups of up to 20 or 30 animals in, the high density areas particularly in the southwest of England. They live in sets, and the picture at the top is a typical set with bedding material outside it that's been dragged in and cleared out by the Badgers, and it compared with rabbit burrows, they've got a very kind of U shaped entrance rather than sort of round entrance.
They're crepuscular nocturnal, which means they come out at, dusk and they're around at night, foraging in the summer where, our days are really quite long. You'll often see them, in the, the dusk and first thing in the morning, whereas in winter you tend to only see them in the lights of your your car headlights. They're opportunist Omnivores that basically that means means they'll eat anything and that can sometimes get them into trouble if they're seen with a dead lamb or something like that.
But their favourite food is earthworms, and there's some really cool videos online of badgers eating earthworms like spaghetti. They're must aids, so they have five digits, very short limbs, which can make them feel a bit contra dysplastic when you're first examining them and takes a bit of getting used to and they have a musty sub caudal, scent gland, which I'll show you. I think in a few pictures.
They're very clever in that they're seasonal breeders and delayed implants. They have two main mating seasons, around about March and around about November. But everybody then implants their eggs about the same time, with all cubs being born, usually in February.
They come into contact with man on the road and in farm yards and in buildings, usually as a result of territorial disputes with other badgers. So those are our main reason for presentation. So road traffic accidents, territorial, wounding, sometimes just old injuries, sometimes digging and baiting injuries.
Badgers are still persecuted, and occasionally we'll see, badger Cubs. So, as I've already suggested, we have two mating periods in badgers. The first one tends to pick up most of the animals with then some of the early cubs Come on, ones that haven't, become, fertile to the first mating, becoming, receptive to second mating points.
So we've got mating around about march around about November, and the reason we see badgers very much follows that trend. The only other little trend we get is we get quite a few summer road traffic accidents in female badgers. Badgers are really well protected, as well as being protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the Animal Welfare Act when they're in captivity.
They also have their own act, the protection of Badgers act. And this is really because they've been persecuted over a lot of years and still are, a mainland Europe. The picture on the top right is from France.
The protection means that you do potentially need, licences to do certain things to them, so to vaccinate them in the field, to cull them, to mark them, including in captivity, including microchips to kill them unless it's an act of mercy. So if we're euthanizing them because they test positive for TB, we need a licence to do that and to disturb sets. So if we're putting trail cameras around a set area, we might need a licence.
Generally, most of the things you'll do with them in practise you don't need a licence for, but just be aware of those licencing requirements. Licences are relatively easy to get, so the basics, unlike foxes, they don't have much of a scruff, so it's probably better to cover and control their head with a heavy blanket than try and scruff them once you've got the badges sedated or if it's genuinely unconscious and I would poke it with a stick to make sure it is. First, you can slide on a basketball muzzle, and that's really helpful.
You should be wearing gloves again on first contact with them just because there are some obvious disease risks and because of those obvious disease risks. And I'm including Mycobacterium Bovis in that we need to make sure we're using appropriate disinfectants when we're cleaning up after them. If you go on the de Defra website, there's a Defra disinfectants list for notifiable diseases, and that will tell you what's appropriate for TB.
We're typically using, say, four at the moment. So it's much more pleasant to work with than some of the IOA four. Form type, disinfectants.
When you're working closely with badger Cubs, it's actually really sensible to wear a surgical face mask, and this is to stop you giving the badger cub infection. Because there was some evidence of COVID-19 being transmitted to MUS loads and clearly, we don't want that. When your staff are dealing with A with badges in captivity and cleaning, say, a cage with urine and faeces in it, you want to use the other type of mask an FFP three face mask to avoid any risk of of spray.
So when our staffers say scrubbing out a kennel, we would expect them to do that. And, of course, from a TB perspective, you should never be poor smelter Badgers in practise intravenous access again is pretty easy. So jocular for blood cephalic Or remember cenas for things like euthanasia, blood if you really need to.
As I've mentioned, those front legs can feel a bit twisty to start off with. And I always say it's a bit like a peak, a dash when you're trying to get a catheter in there. But you will get used to that.
The more badgers you look at, and that's why it's good to examine all badges. So you get a real feel for what badger legs normally feel like. I am injections, always using lumbar or gluteal muscles and sub coat wherever you can get it again.
Microchipping is regulated, and it needs to be in that standard side. Badgers don't always eat terribly well in captivity. But you can tempt them with things like sausages, body cavity of dead day old chicks again.
Fresh rot kale. So first aid assume they need fluid therapy, so subco or evil oral is better than nothing. But if they're coming into a vet, then probably some IV fluids are sensible.
So just as for Fox is the same sort of bless and then do rates again if they come to a vet and they've got painful conditions and proper analgesia would be nice, so use opioids rather than non steroidals. Nonsteroidals are sometimes written into SOPS for wildlife centres, so as veterinary professionals do something different and something that is more beneficial to the badger, and there's some standard doses there for you again, just with foxes, do you want to be sedating or anaesthetizing to examine? So my standard sedative would be ketamine and metta toid in the same needle given into, the quadriceps or, lumbar muscles of the badger, either with somebody with a big heavy blanket over the badger head or in a badger crushed cage.
There are combinations in the literature using, Tosic in combination with these two drugs. But I would rather save my opioid for some proper opioid, so I would tend to use, something like methadone. With with these inappropriate combinations, once you've got your banjer asleep, you can look at it really well, including looking at teeth.
The badger at the bottom has got really worn teeth. This is a really old animal. If it's also skinny with loads of wounds, I would be putting that to sleep.
The one at the top is just to show you what a mess teeth can be at moments in time. In baby badger covers, they take quite a long time for adult teeth to come through and deciduous ones to be lost. And sometimes the badges haven't followed the whole numbering of teeth.
They've either got extra ones or ones missing. You don't need to do anything with teeth like those. They'll be fine.
Have a good look, as you did with the foxes from head to toe, making sure every aspect of the badger is OK again. Diagnostics need to be based largely on your clinical examination. If you are gonna run bloods in house for badgers.
Then haematology will be fine. Probably put it on a dog setting, and then you need some reference ranges to interpret it. But haematology won't be OK through your in-house machine.
So if you want to do some haematology, I would suggest you just do a P CV and a fresh blood smear. And if you want more than that, send your haematology off to an external lab, making it clear it's a badger more than foxes. You need to be really conscious of disease control with badgers, and, when you're thinking about treating any condition, just remember these are really territorial animals.
So if you're going to have them out of their normal territory for very long, that's potentially problematic. So really think about how long it's gonna take to treat the problem. So road traffic collisions are really common in badgers.
They're fairly robust animals so often people will pick them up, having seen the badger on the road in the morning and then in the afternoon, driving home from work, realise it's still alive. The injuries. This a stain based on the published works and mine for badgers or the people for dogs and cats are really similar to what we see in dogs and cats.
So we get orthopaedic injuries of of the jaw, of the long bones and particularly the pelvis. Very often there's lots of injuries, and these animals just need to be euthanased. It's actually fairly unusual to get a single fracture or something simple that you can replace.
I have removed spleens. I have repaired ruptured diaphragms, but the majority of badges you see will be so badly injured that putting them back together is not realistic. If you are going to embark on some sort of treatment, then do some first aid first, and they can get them properly under anaesthetic to have a really good look at them.
Conspecific territorial wounding in badges is really common. It's what they do. Normally, they chase each other around and take lumps out of each other's face or bottoms.
So this is not abnormal. And in the wild, where badges are studied, these wounds actually heal really well. So when badgers are trapped with these wounds, samples are taken for other purposes and the badges are released.
When the next trap, the wounds have gone away. The wounds, as you might expect, are more common in male animals than female animals, and the wounds in male animals tend to be on the rump area, so the males are biting each other on the bottom. The females are more bitchy, a bit more face to face, so we tend to get sort of face and neck wounds, in the female animals, which actually can be more difficult to treat because they're less accessible.
Often these animals are found in buildings, so farm buildings, people's gardens, because when they're beaten up, they just go and find somewhere to hide away from the main social group. Wounds are a potential, both of its risk in that the badger that did the biting could have bacteria in its mouth. But the wounds are not a sign of TB.
They're a sign potentially of the badger having other concurrent problems across a whole spectrum of things. The first thing you need to do with the bite wounds is sedate the badger and have a really good look at it. About half the badgers with bite wounds will have something else going on, and you need to decide whether that something else is OK, and the the badger can still be treated, so my advice would be to ignore the wound.
First, look at the rest of the badger, and if it's a young, fit, healthy badger that's just got in a scrap with a sort of older, older male, Usually then you can go on and treat wear gloves when you're doing this. Don't clip a lot, because otherwise the badger will be hairless for far too long, and you don't need to stitch these or heavily Debra them. I think the best way of thinking about them is like an old cat by abscess.
That's sort of lost its skin, and by the time you get it healthy to a point where you might Deri and Stitch, it's pretty much healed anyway. These are the same. If you stitch them, they'll break down really readily.
Once we've got them clean, we tend to try and clean them every day. In the case of rump wounds or every 3 to 4 days in the case of face wounds under sedation, using saline over a dilute or hexedine and then slapping on some hydrochlorate gel with the R wounds. This is quite easy.
Big blanket over the badger's head and then, you know, a spray or a spatula to put on the intracity gel. We tend to use other drugs for about four days around the time of initial cleaning. These wounds, one would imagine, are quite painful when we've sort of been cleaning them.
They do take time, several weeks to heal, and we need to really think about whether that's beneficial to the badger. If this has been a kind of final territorial dispute in, say, a very old animal, as I've already mentioned, it's now thankfully illegal to set snares in some parts of the United Kingdom. But badges still will get snared.
It's always been illegal to set a snare for a badger, and the picture at the top is the worst type of snare. That's a drag snare, where the badger has been dragging the piece of the wood along with it until it's hit a fence post. If you find evidence that badgers being sned, you should be reporting these both a welfare organisation, but also to the National Wildlife Crime Unit of the police, who have badgers as one of their top species of interest and keep really good records for these.
As I mentioned with the foxes, we often get delayed ischaemic necrosis associated with snares, and you can actually see why that might be the case and those pitches at the bottom. That wound, which was really beautifully stitched by some of my colleagues, did break down a bit centrally because you're just not quite sure how much to Devi in that sort of area. The wound was really easy to stitch from the point of view of having plenty of loose skin.
But clearly that's not always the case. But I we always keep any animals with any sort of entrapment injury in for at least a week, so a week to 10 days before you release it, Badger baiting, sadly, still occurs and is horrendous. The injuries occur both to the badger, but they also occur to the dog.
And some of these dogs have really awful lives that patter. Dale's got a tracking device on its collar so that when it's underground in the Badgers set, it can still be tracked. But you can also see the degree of lip injuries it's got and very often these receive no veterinary attention whatsoever.
It's worth noting, having talked about territorial wounding, that the wounds badgers get from dogs are really different. You remember when I talked about territorial wounding? It was on the face and neck, and the rump wounds from dogs tend to be on the limbs and the body.
Often badges are debilitated, first by being hit with a spade, so they've got other injuries, too. This is really horrible. There's ways vets can be involved, for example, using emetics and suspect drugs.
But it's worth remembering that people that badger are not nice people. So you need to be doing this with good legal advice and legal support as well, both from the police and from the Royal College Badgers get a whole load of parasites. And if you're interested in this little poster on the right hand side, which is about, enter pathogens in baby badgers, it's available on the secret World website.
The parasites that are significant have underlined badgers get lung worm, and they're probably most significant because they can be confused with both an TB lesions on X ray. They also get aeria, IOS, Isospora and giardia and these can cause diarrhoea and death in cubs. They're really significant.
Probably the most significant viral infection we've seen at Secret World has been parvovirus set in badgers. And again, there's lots of information in this poster about that. And, of course, the most significant bacterial disease is mycobacterium Bovis.
From a clinical perspective, T be in badgers is the same as in most other species. It's a slow, chronic disease that results in poor body condition. The other clinical signs we might see then depends on where the mycobacteria end up.
So travel around the body in the bloodstream and they end up in small vessels. So pictures at the top they've ended up in growth plates, in young badges and at the bottom they've obviously ended up in the chest. It's actually really unusual to get pary chest, lesions visible on X ray in badgers.
If we've ever got any suspicion of, T be badges, we should just be eutin those animals as I'll go on and explain. The tests we have are not good enough to, be, specific enough to make an absolute diagnosis. So I think we need to go on our instinct with this.
So in terms of dealing with TB risks, there's a badger rehabilitation policy, which again is available on the Secret World website, and this was reviewed and updated with DEFRA by myself in 2018. It covers all aspects of badger rehabilitation puts but puts an emphasis on mitigating any TB risks when we release badgers. There's also an in practise article, which concentrates on just the TB, parts of this paper adult badges.
We tend to keep isolated in captivity largely for territorial reasons, and for those same reasons, we release them back exactly where they were found. Badger Cubs We triple test during captivity with the only commercially valuable test, which is called DPP. Our short term care of badgers is really they don't want to stay in practises too long.
There's barking dogs. There's a disease risk issue. Our facilities are not always ideal to keep badgers in.
If we are gonna keep them again a bit like foxes, they want somewhere that's easily cleaned somewhere they can hide, and badge is also like a latrine toilet area to have as well, and you also need to remember that the Mori bon badge of hopefully after your fluids might not be moribund, so you need to be able to catch it again. As I mentioned earlier, Badgers often don't eat for several days or even several weeks. They're really able to shut down the metabolism and not do that.
So don't use not eating as a reason for euthanasia. There's lots of things you can tempt them with. They're opportunist Omnivores.
Just think about what they might like. They really like peanuts. They're often used for baiting, both for culling and for ecological surveys as well.
Badger cubs don't wean until about eight weeks old. So if, like me and rearing neonates is not your favourite thing. Badger cubs are a total nightmare.
They're social, so we rear them in groups. We mix badgers from several areas, and we have to translocated them to a new site for release. So there is the risk of spreading TB.
For that reason, we use the only commercially available test, which is a dual path platform. It's a lateral flow test which has fairly poor sensitivity, but it's very specific and we test three times during rearing. If animals test positive, they're euthanase.
And they go for post mortem and culture from M Bovis. And we wait for those results before deciding on the outcome for the rest of the group. And there's more information in this.
In those other documents I referred to a couple of slides ago post weaning. We move our badger cubs into indoor enclosures, as is sewn at the top and then into our underwired outdoor enclosure. We keep them until they're about six months old and we've got an appropriate release site set up, and we BC G vaccinate them prior to release.
So any cubs being released are triple tested and BC G ed. In terms of lease, we create artificial sets, which is shown top right. These are electric fenced for a couple of weeks.
The badges are support fed in that enclosure, and then the fences come down with with with support feeding, continuing, through the winter, we do quite a lot of monitoring using our F ID and using trail cameras. So the final section of this lecture is gonna be on, otters, So otters are pretty amazing. Largely solitary.
Big must aids. They weigh quite a lot, as much as as badges and a lot more than foxes. They don't really have a neck.
I find them hard to handle and they're strong. I think they're more aggressive than badgers and foxes and potentially quite dangerous. If you haven't got somebody confident handling them, they don't breed until they're about two years old.
And that's largely because the one litre a year then stay with mum for at least 12 months. They were almost hunted out in the late fifties, and then the populations recovered but were hit again. As a result of, polychlorinated by phenol contamination of our waterways and a lot of the work around this was done by, my late colleague and friend Vic Simpson.
There's no really good population recovery of otters, which is brilliant, but it does put a bit of a strain on rehabilitation facilities. These need very specialised facilities, and we need to keep cubs for quite a long time before they're released. So there is a bit of a strain on availability at the moment, the main reasons for presentation are not dissimilar to badgers RT, a conspecific wounding and less commonly environmental pollution and toxicity.
And increasingly, because of pressures on areas four Rotters orphan cubs. They're again quite well protected, both under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. And when they're in captivity under the Animal Welfare Act.
But you are allowed to take them to look after them in captivity if they're injured, in or orphaned in any way. So the basics, I wouldn't handle them, without good sedation. Even with cobs.
I, I find these are quite hard animals to handle. Good rehabbers might be able to get hold of them with a big towel and allow you to do some basic examination. But largely I try and get these animals into a cage and sedate them before you do anything with them.
As with badgers, they must aids. So when we're handling them, we should be thinking about spread of human coronaviruses to the animal. So we should be wearing a surgical mask again.
The injection sites are just the same as for dogs, foxes and badgers. So really easy for you to do. And those microchipping sites are the same as well.
Oral medication can go in face and very often needs to, because repeat injections of otters can be incredibly difficult. So first aid and examination. So again, I would use ketamine and medi tomaine, in the same syringe, using a sort of lower end of, the ketamine dose compared with, badgers and reversing in the same way.
Same volume, the same volume for reversal of badgers as well. I probably didn't mention that what's different about otters is the meant to swim in cold water. So just like our water birds that we see things like swans, we need to be really conscious of overheating under sedation.
So when you've got these animals under anaesthetic, don't use supplementary heat and still monitor temperature really well, even without heat cos you might need to actually cool them down rather than warm them up once you've got them sedated. Really good clinical examination, looking for bite wounds and also checking things like their mouth and the webbing in their feet. Same thing as foxes and badges for fluids.
You're unlikely to keep a drip in place, So do this on repeat bolus, as if you're giving fluids and opioids stick to the lower end of methadone, but otherwise standard dog doses. Most of the trauma we see in otters is either otter otter trauma or is road traffic accidents and your road traffic accidents? Sites are very similar to what we would see in badgers and and see dogs, so we just need really good examination.
One thing I'd say about otter wounds is they don't heal very well when sutured. You don't want to be clipping them very much. But even when you're careful about your su chain, they seem to break down more often.
So if they're relatively small wounds, I would leave them to heal by secondary intention, because deriding to suture them just ends up with a bigger open wound. Conspecific. Wounding in otters is really common as common as it is in badgers, but they're more horrible to each other.
Badgers don't really kill each other with conspecific wounding and otters really do. This is an otter that's got hold of another otter's face and kind of lifted its top lip off its, top jaw, which is pretty awful. And we see a lot of facial injuries and also perineal injuries.
So injuries around testes, injuries around the OSS Penis as well. In in otters, Vic Simpson used to talk about grooming otters to look for wounds. So with the otter and sedation really brushing it because the puncture wounds can be very small, but the damage on them can be catastrophic.
Often euthanasia is is the outcome for otter otter wounding short term care. I mean, be careful. You might need to keep them.
I might actually keep them in a, big dog kennel. You know, transport kennel, rather than actually even putting them into a walking kennel because they're gonna be quite hard to catch. Just think about how you're gonna recapture them or shoy them into a, kennel if you are gonna put them into, one of your kennels in a in a veterinary practise.
Also, you should know where your wildlife centres that have otter facilities are so that if you do get otters, including otter cubs in you know where you're going to be able to, send them to a lot of centres will look after little otter, cubs and bottle feed them. But trying to find centres with that long term rehab facility is actually quite difficult. Otter cubs are social, so we very quickly try and pair them up.
And there's usually an online network of knowing where individual cubs are, so we can bring them together in twos or threes. So otter cubs are born all year round, but we tend to typically see them in the spring, and they usually are presented at the age at which they start becoming above ground. So sometimes, Mum will have been killed on the road, or attacked by another otter, or, that died for other reasons.
And then the cubs will be found, usually vocalising. To some extent. They start off being fed just on milk, and then they tend to go on a milky fishy motion and eventually, on two small fish.
We tend to rear them with one carer because they tend to behave better in that way. They are really stressy and, as I said, potentially quite dangerous to handle. But that's how we want them.
We want them to be wild. Sometimes. If they're stressed, we'll get evidence of gastric ulceration, so using things like gastric protections can be quite useful, and often we'll find they have respiratory infections as well.
So thinking about antibacterials for those is really useful. They have really long rehab periods, so typically 12 to 18 months, so really quite a long time to keep them in captivity. And they take up usually quite, you know, well-developed facilities in wildlife centres, and they're really expensive to keep in terms of the numbers of fish that, they eat because they're aggressive.
It's also not possible to keep too many at the centre at one time. So this is our otter pond. It's electric fenced.
It's the water's always filtered on a regular basis. There's various holi structures around it, and obviously we want to get the otters swimming really well before they're released, we try and soft release them in an electric fence. Bit of stream, or sort of naturally occurring late, But that can be really hard to do.
But we have rehabilitated them, successfully, the microchip before they're released that we're able to sort of track what's ongoing with them. So thanks very much for listening to me. A few sources of information.
So the BS, a VA manual, I think, is still probably the best clinical book for British Wildlife and The Secret World Book is a sort of rehab, a book that sits below the BS, a VA book. I'd also like to draw your attention to some resources that were developed with the Born Free Foundation, which go through the rehab process and also have a big list of, electronic resources. So things like published papers, which might be really useful for some of you.
Thanks very much for listening to me. And I'm sure if you've got any questions, you should be able to track me down.
