Dehydration Kills
Butterflies and humans are having a great time in this hot weather, but it’s not the same for all wildlife. Water is essential for all of us. Hedgehogs often find their water in puddles. In this unusually hot weather we are experiencing, water evaporates and they are unable to find it.
Earthworms, that form a vital part of their diet are going into aestivation – they cannot survive in this state indefinitely and around 87% will perish.
At the wildlife rescue we are hit on many levels:
- Just keeping hedgehogs hydrated and water bowls topped up is a full time job.
- Keeping the tiny hoglets hydrated in between the vital bottle feeds they need to help them grow is doubling our interaction with them.
- Rehydrating a hedgehog with a primary injury, such as a break from a road traffic accident, would normally take a short period but now that is prolonged.
- We are seeing an increased number of hedgehogs with dehydration coming into the centre, especially hoglets who just don’t know where to go for water – they are hit the hardest as they don’t have the knowledge of surviving in a drought.
A dehydrated animal cannot feed and will not become hydrated with water alone. We use rehydration fluid for much of our wildlife. There is a simple home remedy version you can use in your garden –
- 1 litre of water
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
We regularly top up our outside water with rehydration fluid but here is a simple way we use to slow down evaporation in the outside runs.
(Please note this is for extreme weather. We use a totally different rehydration solution to this in the rescue for wildlife. This mixture of salt and sugar is a very weak solution and we use it in all our outside bird aviaries in hot weather and have not experienced any adverse issues with any mammals or birds. In very hot extreme weather (that we have experienced recently) the difference between life and death is the sugar and salt levels and water alone will not be the answer..)
Get a shallow and stable tray from your garden centre like this one here that is used for plants to stand in, fill it up with gravel like this and the whole evaporation process will slow down. Wildlife can dig in the gravel to find water.
Water is essential for us to survive so please spare a bowl for our wildlife remember for these little cuties its tough out there.