Not a rehabber yet, and you have an animal right now?

This section is written for people training to become permitted wildlife rehabilitators. If you have found an animal today, do not start here. Text us at 901-340-6534, or start with Found an animal? and we will help you figure out the next hour. Caring for wildlife without a permit is illegal in Tennessee, and most animals raised by well-meaning finders do not survive.

When we started Out of the Woods, the hardest part was not the animals. It was that nobody hands you a list. What formula, what syringe, what the inspector actually wants to see, which of the fifty conflicting things on the internet is true. We put ours in one place so the next person does not have to piece it together.

Everything below is what we use, written by the people who use it. Where we are repeating someone else’s work, we say so and send you to them. Where we disagree with common practice, we say that too, and we tell you why.

Everything in this section

Getting started in Tennessee:

Care and nutrition:

Getting permitted in Tennessee

TWRA requires a permit before you take in a single animal. There is no grace period and no exception for a good outcome. The agency asks for 200 hours of hands-on experience with the species you want to work with, or a veterinary route, and those hours have to come from another permitted rehabber. That is the step that stops most people, and it is the step we most want to help with.

If you are in West Tennessee and looking for hours, text us at 901-340-6534. We take people on and we do not charge for it.

Setting up your facility

The headline rule surprises people: your animals cannot live in your normal living space. A spare bedroom does not count. A garage, a shed, an outbuilding or a dedicated room with its own entrance all do. Beyond that you need correctly sized caging, a dedicated fridge, a way to heat formula, a water source that is not your kitchen or bathroom, heat sources for neonates that do not auto-shut-off, and a patient records plan.

Buying your supplies

New rehabbers overspend on the wrong things and underspend on the right ones. If you are starting from nothing: heat source, syringes and Miracle Nipples, one formula appropriate to your species, electrolytes, a scale that reads to the gram, and the Wild Mammal Babies book. The gram scale is the single most useful thing in the building, because almost every decision you make is a weight decision.

Training, books and organizations

Wildlife rehabilitation has real professional bodies, real continuing education and real peer-reviewed literature. Use them.

International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council

Their Basic Wildlife Rehabilitation course is the one we recommend to everyone. Once you are ready to apply for your permit, ask us before you buy a membership. We can add you to our group membership instead, so please do not pay for one.

National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association

Conferences, symposium proceedings, and the standards documents that most state agencies lean on.

eWildAgain

Shirley and Allan Casey have been rehabbing since 1986 and publishing on it since the nineties. Their wildlife formula calculator is the single most useful free tool in this field, and it is what we model our own blends in.

Books worth owning

Wild Mammal Babies: The First 48 Hours and Beyond. Every rehabber should have this book. It is only sold through Chris’s Squirrels and More, and if you call rather than order online you can request Media Mail and save significantly on shipping. That discount is not available for online purchases.

Wildlife Rehabilitation: A Comprehensive Approach, for when you want the textbook.

Finding other rehabbers

TWRA maintains a list of permitted rehabilitators by county. Animal Help Now searches by species and location and is what most of the public ends up using. Get yourself listed on both as soon as your permit is issued, because it is how people find you.

Questions

We answer new-rehabber questions from anywhere, not just West Tennessee, and we do it for free. Text 901-340-6534. If you are working toward your permit and want hours, tell us. Mentoring is how this field keeps going.