Baby Raccoons: What to Do If You Find One (or Hear Them in Your Attic)
The right response depends on the situation — and the wrong one can be fatal for the kits or expensive for your home. Here's the honest guidance.
Raccoon Baby Season in Louisville: The Timeline
Mating season. Females seek den sites — this is when most attic and chimney break-ins happen in Louisville.
Birth season. Litters of 2–5 kits are born blind and helpless in the den. You'll hear chirping and mewing.
Kits grow and begin moving around. This is when attic noise (and damage) peaks.
Young raccoons begin foraging with mom and gradually disperse. Dens empty out naturally — but the entry holes remain.
Found a Baby Raccoon? Match Your Situation
Baby alone, eyes closed, quiet
Mom is likely nearby foraging or in the middle of moving the litter to a new den. Leave it alone and keep pets away — mothers retrieve kits after dark. Check again in the morning.
Baby crying loudly for hours or overnight
The mother may be dead or trapped (often removed by someone's DIY trapping). Don't feed it. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator — in the Louisville area, Second Chances Wildlife Center (502-888-5470) or Broadbent Wildlife Sanctuary (270-547-4200).
Baby injured, covered in flies, cold, or in danger
Wearing gloves, place it in a ventilated box with a soft cloth in a quiet, warm spot and call a rehabilitator immediately. Do not give food or milk — cow's milk can be fatal to kits.
Babies in your attic or chimney
Never seal the entry or trap the mother alone. Call us — we remove mother and kits together so the family stays intact and nothing dies in your walls.
The #1 Mistake: Trapping Mom Without the Babies
Every spring we get calls that start with "we trapped a raccoon last week, and now there's a smell / crying in the walls." A relocated mother means orphaned kits starving in your attic or wall voids. Any removal between March and August must account for babies — it's the foundation of our attic removal process and the reason DIY trapping so often ends with a dead animal removal bill.
Baby Raccoons — Frequently Asked Questions
I found a baby raccoon. Should I take care of it?
No. It is illegal in Kentucky to keep a wild raccoon as a pet, kits require specialized care (cow's milk can kill them), and raccoons are a rabies vector species — which means health departments may require a bite-exposure kit to be euthanized for testing. Call a licensed wildlife rehabilitator instead.
When do raccoons have babies in Kentucky?
Most litters in the Louisville area are born between March and May, after a February–March mating season. Litters average 2–5 kits. A second, smaller wave of late litters can arrive in June–July.
Will a mother raccoon abandon her babies if I disturb the nest?
Rarely. Raccoon mothers are extremely devoted and will usually move the entire litter to a backup den if disturbed — one kit at a time, by mouth, overnight. This is actually the basis of humane eviction techniques professionals use.
What happens to the babies when you remove raccoons from an attic?
We remove the kits by hand and reunite them with the trapped or evicted mother whenever possible, so she can relocate them to one of her backup den sites. This is both the humane standard and the practical one — a mother separated from live kits will destroy your roof trying to get back in.
How long until baby raccoons leave the attic on their own?
Kits stay in the den 8–10 weeks before they can follow their mother out, and the family may use your attic until fall. That's months of accumulating droppings, urine-soaked insulation, and chewing. Early professional removal is almost always cheaper than waiting.
Hearing Babies in Your Attic or Chimney?
We specialize in mother-and-kit removals that keep the family together and your home intact. Serving Louisville Metro and Southern Indiana, 24/7.