Handbooks
Developed with leading experts in bat rehabilitation, BCT's Bat Care Guidelines are a standard reference for volunteers and veterinary professionals around the UK. The electronic copy is free for everyone to download. UK Bat Care Network members also receive a free hard copy when they join, and additional free copies for any training courses they run.
If you're not a Network member but would like a hard copy of the Guidelines, please email batcare@bats.org.uk. We ask that you make a donation of at least £5 to the National Bat Helpline's bat care service to cover costs and help us continue providing advice.
Please note that our ability to send hard copies is significantly limited during the coronavirus pandemic, as our staff are generally working from home. We will keep your registration and/or request on file and send a copy out as soon as we are able. Thank you very much for your patience.
Another excellent resource is the Bat Rescue Manual, written by long-time Network member Maggie Brown and her husband Bryan. The price was £37 as of January 2019. If you'd like to order a copy, please contact Maggie and Bryan on batcarenews@phonecoop.coop.
Finally, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association's BSAVA Manual of Wildlife Casualties includes a chapter on bats. You can support both BCT and independent bookshops by ordering a copy from our bookshop.org store! Just enter the title in the search bar at the top.
Record-keeping
Keeping thorough and accurate records is vital for the care of individual bats, and can also help reveal common patterns and trends. Maggie Brown has developed an excellent Bat Rescue Register to record essential information when a bat first comes in. You should be using this or an equivalent form for every bat that comes into your care.
For longer-term recording, Maggie and a fellow carer, Tricia Scott, have also produced an Annual Bat Casualty Statistics Excel spreadsheet. Maggie and Tricia would be very interested to receive your completed copies of this spreadsheet each year; instructions for submitting it are on the Guidance Notes tab.
Bat Care Bulletin articles
The Bat Care Bulletin blog has a number of useful articles under the categories Bat Care and Bat Health. You can also use the index at the bottom of the blog to find specific topics you're interested in. All posts are initially password-protected and accessible to UK Bat Care Network members only, but most are eventually made public. If you’re not a UK Bat Care Network member and find these articles helpful, please support BCT’s bat care work by making a donation.
If you volunteer with a Network-registered regional helpline or wildlife hospital, please ask your co-ordinator for the blog password. If you’re a Network member under your own name but have lost your password, please contact the Bat Care Network Co-Ordinator on batcare@bats.org.uk.
National Bat Care Conference presentations
You may also be interested in these resources from previous National Bat Care Conferences:
- Observations to help increase success reuniting bat pups with their monthers (Kit Wood)
- Solving the problem of lost babies (Kit Wood)
- Mapping the development of baby bats (Maggie Brown)
- A brief guide to bat ectoparasites (David Dodds)
- Bat species identification for bat carers (Gail Armstrong)
- Bat care for complete beginners (Bridget Parslow)
- The value of enrichment (Naomi Webster)
