Sick Animals
If you discover a sick wild animal, read our advice to find out how you can help.
What to do if you find a sick wild animal
If you find a sick wild animal, it can be upsetting and you might not be sure what to do.
If you discover sick wildlife please call our Helpline on 03000 999 999, open from 8am to 8pm every day.
How to tell if a wild animal is unwell
A healthy wild adult animal will typically flee when a human approaches them. If a wild animal lets you approach, it is likely they need help. However, young animals are often reliant on their parents so being able to get close to them is not necessarily a cause for concern.
Common signs of illness include:
- Lethargy or moving slowly
- Discharge around the eyes, nose, mouth or ears
- Abnormal behaviour such as twitching the head, walking round in circles
- Open-mouthed, laboured breathing or gasping
Body condition may also indicate that a wild animal is poorly. If an animal looks emaciated or very underweight, it could be due to illness.
People often see grounded birds with puffed up feathers and think they’re just trying to stay warm or that they’re overweight. However, birds with puffed up feathers will almost certainly need help.
Not sure if the animal is unwell?
If there are no obvious signs of injury or illness and the animal is otherwise safe, it’s best to monitor from a distance. If you can revisit the location regularly over a 24-hour period, that is the ideal scenario. To avoid causing further stress, stay as far away as possible whilst still being able to see the animal, or watch from a window if the animal is in your garden.
What you can do to help a sick animal
If you discover a sick animal, please call our Helpline on 03000 999 999, open from 8am to 8pm every day.
If you do need to contact us, we ask that certain smaller species should be contained using a box before we will attend. These animals include:
- Amphibians
- Bats
- Hedgehogs
- Rabbits
- Squirrels
- Birds except swans, geese, heron, gannets and birds of prey
- Rodents and other small mammals (shrews, voles, mice, rats and moles)
For more information about containing animals, click here.
If you do need to touch the animal to move it to safety, wear gloves and wash your hands thoroughly afterwards.
Sick wild animals will need specialist help from trained experts. Well-meaning people sometimes try to nurse sick animals back to health or hand-rear young animals.
This makes it almost impossible to release them back into the wild successfully. Without professionals giving the right care, the animal’s condition could get much worse, or the animal can die.
If you discover a sick animal, please call our Helpline on 03000 999 999, open from 8am to 8pm every day.
How we will help
If you are not able to safely contain the animal, or cannot take the animal to your local veterinary practice, and you need our help, our highly-skilled Officers will assess the animal and make a decision based on quality of life.
If the animal is assessed and found to be unharmed, it may be in the animal’s best interest for our Officers to leave them where they are.
If the animal is otherwise healthy and is likely to survive their injury, they will be taken to our National Wildlife Rescue Centre where they will receive the treatment and rehabilitation they need to be able to thrive in the wild again.
However, if the animal is unlikely to recover from their injuries, the decision may be taken to have them humanely euthanised. Where the injury is so severe that the type of animal would not be able to survive in the wild, for example, a deer with a missing limb, the best thing for them would be to end their suffering.
Unfortunately, if non-native, invasive species such as grey squirrels, mink and Canada geese come into our care, we cannot release them and by law, they must be put to sleep. The UK Government enforces legislation that determines that non-native, invasive species must be humanely euthanised and we do need to operate within the law.
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It costs us £63,000 every day to continue the work that animals across Scotland depend on. Our work is only possible because of the generosity of people like you.
