We are licensed (in the UK) to keep bats and are rehabilitating a female common pipistrelle, who we have been looking after for nearly 3 weeks. When she was found, clinging to a wall, quite low down, there was no obvious roost nearby; she was barely a juvenile, but has progressed since then, looks very fit and well filled out, although still very small.
However, she won't feed herself; if I don't squeeze out the insides of freshly killed mealworms for her to eat (9 morning and night) and feed them to her, she won't attempt to eat. She sometimes chews the skin and the inside, but spits out the skin. If I try to give her white mealworms (recently having shed their skins), she is unimpressed, because they are rather flat when killed, with little substance inside, and she refuses to bother with them. So, she is not getting anything but mealworm insides. If I leave halved mealworms for her, she does not eat them.
She is very active, but never stretches her wings. I can spread them out, and she does not really mind, but this does not remind her that they are there to be used. I have tried to encourage her to fly, but she just crawls around on my hand.
The two (resident) bats who live in a large vivarium in the room where her tank is cannot fly (which is why they are with us for long-term), so we don’t have another bat to show her how to fly. If we do have one in for rehab, we will let her watch the test flights prior to release.
Any suggestions for either problem would be great; thank you in advance.
Mary Wilson
I have just had a call from another bat carer and am going to try:
- not feeding her, but leaving a mixture of killed white mealworms (but not using boiling water to stop them being so flat) and mealworm insides,
- try the insides of morio worms
- only feeding her at night so that she is hungry
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