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Raccoon went in my ferals electric water bowl!

post #1 of 8
1/13/10 at 2:39pm
Thread Starter 
i was just checking on my ferals and right in the middle of their water bowl a raccoon was sitting and appeared to urinate!
I am so disgusted! Now I am worried about my ferals. I know most raccoons have worms and that they can be transfered to other wildlife, so this probably means that the outside cats definitely have worms and who knows what else. I try to change it every day, but I have missed a day here or there. How can I clean the bowl to make it safe for them? Will regular dish soap and water do the trick?

Oh, yuck! Thanks for any help!
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post #2 of 8
1/13/10 at 3:00pm
What is the bowl made of? If it's plastic you'll be stuck with just dish soap and hot water, unless you can get ahold of some chlorhexidine disinfectant (widely used for in animals). If it's stainless steel you could use a little diluted bleach, then wash it out after with dish soap.

Your ferals will already have worms, though. It's pretty much inevitable for outdoor and indoor/outdoor animals.
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post #3 of 8
1/13/10 at 3:04pm
Thread Starter 
It's made of plastic. Do you think I could use the antibacterial dish soap that they make?
I wish I could just throw it away, but I think that the raccoon will only do it again... Everything is frozen around here so he must be so excited to have found unfrozen clean water... Like I said last post...Yuck!

And you're probably right about the worms, but aren't a raccoons worse or different?
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post #4 of 8
1/13/10 at 5:53pm
I really don't know anything about raccoons and parasites, but the transfer is through poop, not pee. ...but most outside cats do have parasites, esp round worm or tape worm, transmitted by fleas. I'm assuming it's the same for raccoons.

We use antibacterial dish soap when we wash our cats' dishes - have for years. Just rinse well.
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post #5 of 8
1/14/10 at 12:04pm
Soap is soap (technically it's all detergent..). Antibacterial dish soap won't really make any difference as anything really bad won't be deactivated by it - it mainly just washes things away. Vinegar and hydrogen peroxide are both mild antimicrobials, though.

Racoons carry roundworms, while not in their pee - if they're doing that in the water they've probably got some of their feces in it as well.


You might want to look into getting some stainless bowls if you can as they will hold up better and be a lot easier to disinfect.
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post #6 of 8
1/14/10 at 7:17pm
You never can be sure who is drinking out of the water bowl. When we were feeding Patches outside (prior to trapping), we'd see a possum drinking out of her water sometimes. You just never know who else you're taking care of.
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post #7 of 8
2/8/10 at 7:46pm
I have a camera in my shed, so i watch what happens at night.

I use frisbees for food dishes. I bring them back inside and wash them out with a different brush then the ones we use for our dishes.

I also put out pears and apples for the raccoons and possums. I put a second water dish next to the fruit. I have found that the the animals that eat the fruit usually use this water dish.

I have dry food all the time in the shed. If i forget to put out fruit, the possums and raccoons will eat this also. The canned cat food is put a little bit away from the fruit and has another water dish.

Most of the time they get use to their little feeding areas.
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post #8 of 8
2/11/10 at 3:24pm
Racoons do carry roundworms but so do a lot of stray cats coming into the shelter, chances are they already have worms. The main issue for racoon roundworms is the transfer to humans (not pretty)

I bleach my feral's bowls then wash them with regular dish detergent and rinse well
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