Saturday 3 November 2012

No Room At The Inn

This time of year it's not unusual for us to receive a large number of calls from people who have found small hedgehogs. However it is unusual for us to take in entire litters. Over the last month we have rescued a litter of four with their mum (see below) plus a second litter of four hoglets (without their mum).

This is mum with her four hoglets on the 10th October (still suckling)

Thankfully all eight are doing well. The sow who came in with her litter has been returned to the wild whilst her hoglets will stay with us for the entire winter. However this has caused us a slight problem in that all eight are now too big to share a hutch, so we have had to split them. So just two litters have used all eight of our hutches (left hand side of image at end of this post). This means we have had to get creative by using large plastic storage containers and rabbit houses as make shift accommodation.  


Sadly this means the shed is more than full (as you can see below) and we have had to close our doors to new hogs. We don't like to turn any hog away but we have now physically run out of room. 

Even the work surface on the right is now full!

This also means food bills have gone up. So if you would like to support our work please pass on our details to anyone who may be interested in a hog talk (we cover a 15 mile radius of Bishop's Stortford). I'm fully CRB checked so can do talks to Rainbows, Brownies, Cubs etc. We also give talks to WI's, Gardening clubs etc. They can contact us via our Facebook page or via our website for further details.