Eau de hedgehog
I spent a good amount of time at the Wildlife Rescue today. I smell like hedgehog. When you are working with them they really smell and the smell gets into your clothing and hair. As soon as I got home I took off my clothing, washed my face and hands and put on clean clothing and I still get a smell of hedgepig.
Unfortunately 3 died since Anne last fed them at 5AM yesterday. She generally feeds them every morning at 5AM but waited until we got there so Hazel could show us the glop they are fed. Disposing of hedgehog corpses is sad business and there wasn't anything that we could do for them. I know at least one of them hemorrhaged from lungworm.
Lungworm is a horrible problem here and hedgies get it from eating infected snails and slugs. So, if you have a hedgehog population in your garden please put out a bit of cat food, either wet or dry, chicken flavour. No fish flavour, or no milk and bread. They can't digest those.
We are vaccinating them for the worm, but some of them come in with very weak immune systems in addition to the worm and they are too weak for the treatment. The injection is very strong and has to be given with a cocktail of other drugs so as to boost the immune system, cut down on inflammation and also get rid of any other diseases they might have.
The problem with treating wildlife is that there isn't any method to treat them for diseases - all the vets can give us is medication used to treat domestic/farm animals and sometimes it's just not right. At times we just wing it and try our best. It's a crap shoot at best.
The food we feed them at the centre is a mix of dog and/or cat food (canned and dry), peanuts and mealworms all mixed together. It is foul but they love it.
We cleaned out and hosed down a load of cages and disinfected them very well, as well as kept our gloves covered in antibacterial glop during the whole process because we don't want to cross infect.
So, it was busy today. I have articles to update for News of the Wild. Maybe tonight, maybe not.
We are in dire need of old towels, even tea towels and newspapers. I need to put something up on freecycle. We are desperate.
I am beat.
Unfortunately 3 died since Anne last fed them at 5AM yesterday. She generally feeds them every morning at 5AM but waited until we got there so Hazel could show us the glop they are fed. Disposing of hedgehog corpses is sad business and there wasn't anything that we could do for them. I know at least one of them hemorrhaged from lungworm.
Lungworm is a horrible problem here and hedgies get it from eating infected snails and slugs. So, if you have a hedgehog population in your garden please put out a bit of cat food, either wet or dry, chicken flavour. No fish flavour, or no milk and bread. They can't digest those.
We are vaccinating them for the worm, but some of them come in with very weak immune systems in addition to the worm and they are too weak for the treatment. The injection is very strong and has to be given with a cocktail of other drugs so as to boost the immune system, cut down on inflammation and also get rid of any other diseases they might have.
The problem with treating wildlife is that there isn't any method to treat them for diseases - all the vets can give us is medication used to treat domestic/farm animals and sometimes it's just not right. At times we just wing it and try our best. It's a crap shoot at best.
The food we feed them at the centre is a mix of dog and/or cat food (canned and dry), peanuts and mealworms all mixed together. It is foul but they love it.
We cleaned out and hosed down a load of cages and disinfected them very well, as well as kept our gloves covered in antibacterial glop during the whole process because we don't want to cross infect.
So, it was busy today. I have articles to update for News of the Wild. Maybe tonight, maybe not.
We are in dire need of old towels, even tea towels and newspapers. I need to put something up on freecycle. We are desperate.
I am beat.