RE: Help! Hand rearing vole.

Wildlife Nurse — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 16:28:09 GMT

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RE: Help! Hand rearing vole.

lianelocum — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 19:17:30 GMT

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your reply.

Sadly my little vole only survived 2 hours :(.

I'm broody to hand rear again now!

RE: Help! Hand rearing vole.

steven sleep — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 09:11:16 GMT

Hi there,

I generally rear them on 3:1 ratio of RC baby dog and full-fat goats milk. I also supplement them with Kittystim. Usual advice; warmth, stimulate toileting etc. I generally do every 2 hours from 6am until midnight with a night feed at around 3am (not sure if this is excessive but it has always worked for me). In terms of actually feeding, either a paintbrush, small pipette (although these are very cumbersome) or a fine gauge naso-gastric tube cut really short. These little guys tend to START weaning nice and early (before their eyes open). I generally start to provide slithers of apple and formula soaked digestive biscuit at around 2 weeks.

Hope this helps!

*Amendment*

It states in Les Stocker's bible of wildlife care, that they should be fed hourly during the day with two-hourly night feeds. So no sleep for you I'm afraid! Very best of luck

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