Wildlife Casualties

We’ve had a busy week with a lot of wildlife casualties brought in, many injured and orphaned birds and some very poorly hedgehogs.   Most of the birds have pulled through, if we get them soon enough and get them feeding there is a good chance for them.   We need one of the special cabinets –  intensive care incubators (on our wish list) to give them a controlled and warm environment, it would give them all these little casualties a much better chance.  Can anyone help?

Hedgehogs are generally in more difficulty.   If they have eaten slug pellets they don’t make it no matter how big and strong they are.  There are plenty of simple ways to deter slugs without using toxic pellets that kill all wildlife – it’s a slow agonising death for them and distressing for us.  They don’t eat the pellets, it’s the poisoned slugs that get them.

We’ve had some baby hedgehogs brought in this week, they were found lying out in the hot sun.  One died straight away, the others are hanging on and look as though they will make it now they are eating.  Getting fluids down them is the first thing, again a ‘recovery’ cabinet would make all the difference.   Using the ‘wish list’ is easy – go to Pet Samaritans Wish List and click on whatever you can get for us, Amazon does the rest.   It’s a direct way to save lives and help us to keep going.

We have several adult hedgehogs who are now doing well, they are eating and as soon as they’re back up to weight we’ll release.  It’s always in ‘wild’  and uncultivated land with plenty of natural hedgehog food.  Roads are death to hedgehogs and injuries from gardening are common – apart from poisoning we see hedgehogs with missing limbs – caused by strimmers perhaps.

Some of the hedgehogs we release stay around which is lovely, we put feed out for our ‘wild’ friends every day and eventually they manage to forage for themselves.   Hedgehogs love gardens and the food they find but it’s only safe when the neighbours love hedgehogs too and take care to protect them. Our spiny friends like to roam over a big area every night so gaps in hedges are essential and to be sure, if you can, that  all the adjacent gardens are safe for them.

The little girl shown above was hanging by a thread when she came in yesterday.  She was dehydrated, barely alive and with several bad injuries on her head.  They look like bite marks so could have been done by a dog or by a sharp beak – magpies will go after hedgehogs if they can get to them.

We managed to get some water and then our recovery milk down her but when we had a closer look at the wounds we discovered that they were full of maggots.  Flies had laid eggs in the flesh and these had hatched out.  They all had to be picked out with tweezers, it was grisly to do but the little one survived it.   We have flushed the wounds with salt water and given medication.   The hoglet has the will to  live and is picking up.   It’s not over yet though, she was found lying out in the hot sun, she’s not been able to eat and it will still take a miracle for her to survive.   Prayers please ………