Winter beds found in Shropshire for homeless hoglets
Five rumbustious teenagers have been given temporary homes to see out the winter.
With soft bedding, all the food they can eat and round the clock care, they will be well set up when spring comes.
For they are hoglets – juvenile hedgehogs who have been found in various states of distress and brought to the Shropshire Wildlife Trust in Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury.
Staff came to the rescue after being contacted by workers at West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue in Walsall, which has been inundated abandoned and underweight hedgehogs found by residents in their gardens over the winter.
The centre put out a plea for help as they no longer had space for any more hedgehogs.
Simon Edmunds, communications officer at the trust, said: "We have taken inn three juvenile hedgehogs and an underweight adult for a few months and will be feeding them until they reach optimum weight for hibernating for the remainder of the winter.
"Then we were asked to have another two which we picked up this week.
"They are between seven and eight months, which is a similar age to adolescence in humans – although these are slightly easier to look after.
"At the beginning we thought we would have them in the garden but soon realised that wouldn't work so we have each taken them home to hibernate in hutches there.
"I have built a hedgehog hutch, complete with CCTV to enable us to watch our male hoglet, Willy – named after Just William – as he comes out at night.
"They continue to put on much needed weight to allow them to hibernate for the remainder of the winter.
"Like many other mammals, the hedgehogs each have a personality of their own. Houdini is the boldest of the four and has been happily feeding in daylight and is comfortable with being handled, but the others remain shy and curl up into a tight ball of prickles when approached.
"It is important to remember that we are rehabilitating these little hedgehogs to give them a greater chance of survival in the wild, so we have to limit contact with them as much as possible, which is easier said than done."
Fay Vass, 36, chief executive at The Preservation Hedgehog Trust based in Ludlow, said: "There's been a 37 per cent decline in the hedgehog population across the country. Hedgehogs must weigh seven pounds before they can survive in the wild. "We call them Autumn orphans. They don't start coming out of hibernation until March but aren't big enough to survive."
