I too, have bats living on my property. I have a
colony of approx 200 Brazilian Freetail bats living in my barn (this
number was an estimate given to me by bat experts), between the siding
and the wood stall walls. I love having them here - we have a lot of
mosquitoes here in FL. They are very cute little guys, although this
particular species is kinda stinky. The Brazilian Freetails have a
musk gland on their neck and boy, in the heat of summer, you can sure
smell those little guys. They are quite noisy at times, all the
chirping, squeeking and clicking is pretty cool to listen to when I'm
out in the barn.
When I first moved here, the horses were afraid to go into the barn
because of the bats flying in and out at dusk and dawn. Now they're
used to them and I've seen them calmly eating with the bats buzzing
right by them, on their way out for the night.
I had the Florida Bat Conservancy people come over to check out the
colony because I kept finding downed bats on the ground or in feeders,
buckets, and my water trough. Some dead, some still alive. Turns out
they didn't have rabies, they just landed wrong and because I have
siding on my barn, they couldn't climb back up to their roosting site -
the siding is too slick. Bats cannot fly upwards from the ground -
they need to drop down off of something to get going, and then they can
gain altitude after that. So if they can't climb up on something from
the ground, they are stuck. So, some died of either exposure or
exhaustion before I found them, and the others we managed to save in
time and put back up in their homes. I now have mesh stapled up
everywhere - little bat ladders, if you will, and we also put up a bat
house which went unoccupied for almost a year until they finally moved
in a couple of months ago.
Anyway, the "bat people" told me that actually less than 1/10th of 1
percent of bats actually have rabies. They don't have rabies any more
often than other types of mammals. They just have a bad reputation for
it, which is unfounded. I still pick them up with a towel though,
just in case. I just rescued one out of an empty plastic bucket two
days ago. He had crash landed in there and couldn't climb up the
slippery sides of the bucket. He was so weak and tired....I picked him
up in a towel, got a step ladder, and held him up close to where they
enter and exit from my stall walls and he crawled right in. I always
feel good when I'm able to save one. What's cute is that whenever I
put one back, they have a welcoming committee in there....all the bats
start chirping and squeeking when the lost one returns home. :)
Jennifer
Lynn White wrote:
I’m not an expert on bats, but I learned quite a bit
about them when I was constructing bat houses. Bats
can carry rabies, and because they tend to live/breed
in communal environments the disease is spread rapidly
amongst them. The good news about bats and rabies is
that the disease incapacitates and kills bats REALLY
fast so they don’t have a lot of time to spread the
disease to other populations. It’s probably the
reason that we don’t see many disease reports which
include bats. I have three bat houses on my
property. Bats do a great job with mosquitoes and I
just like to have them around. They are such neat
little creatures. But my horses are vaccinated for
rabies.
When bats get sick they can’t fly and they just flop
around on the ground. My concern is my horse coming
upon a sick bat while grazing and getting bit on the
nose. My colt is particularly curious and will sniff
and investigate anything. Heck, he might even try to
eat the darn thing! I’m not trying to make anyone
fearful of bats; in fact I am a proponent of bat
conservation. But rabies is a concern that one should
be aware of and take precautions with. Never, under
any circumstances pick up a downed bat with your bare
hands!
Lynn
"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people"
-W.C. Fields
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