Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters

The little hedgehog caught in the bonfire is typical of the patients that people bring in to centres like Folly. It is sadly all too common for hedgehogs, which live in close proximity to humans, to be caught in bonfires, attacked by dogs, run over by lawnmowers (or cars), or to slip into garden ponds or be trapped in fencing. Sometimes they’re found wandering about during the day when they should be sleeping. That usually means they’re short of food. Sometimes they are found sick – with mange, lungworm or mites – or simply struggling to survive because they’ve been born too late in the year and haven’t put on enough weight to be able to hibernate and survive their first winter.

Hedgehogs are Britain’s favourite wild creature. Immortalised in Beatrix Potter’s much-loved story of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, as well as in numerous books and poems by literary giants such as the poet Philip Larkin, everyone loves them. Yet sadly they’re becoming a rare sight and are even at risk of becoming endangered. Over the past 50 years it is estimated that hedgehog numbers have fallen from around 36 million in the UK to fewer than a million, largely due to loss of their natural habitat. With fewer wilderness areas, hedgehogs are short of both food and safe spaces in which to live and nest. Thousands of them die on the roads, and while looking for food they often stray into gardens that can be full of dangers to them.

There are 17 species of hedgehog; little mammals whose spines are made of hollow hairs hardened by keratin, the stuff that human hair and nails are made from. A distant relative of the shrew (but nothing to do with porcupines), hedgehogs are believed to have changed very little in the past 15 million years, so it would be heartbreaking if we lost them now.

Folly is one of the places doing their utmost to save hedgehogs, by nursing back to health those injured animals that are brought in and by raising awareness of these little creatures and their habits and habitats. If everyone kept a little bit of wilderness in the corner of a garden, made sure that the animals could get out of the garden through a hole in the fence, and looked out for hedgehogs when building ponds or fires, it would make a real difference to their survival rate.

My next case there that day was a mother hedgehog and her two tiny babies, all of them riddled with mites. Their skin was raw and itchy and they’d lost quite a few spines. Mite infestation is very common in hedgehogs; the mites are parasites that are usually too small to see, but they’re easy to treat with the same spot treatment you use for dogs.

Before we applied the spot-on treatment (to avoid it getting washed off) we gave them a family bath in a washing-up bowl containing an inch of warm water with baby oil in it, to soothe their skin and keep it nice and soft. They loved it and we soon had them settled comfortably in a cage together, tucking into a bowl of cat food. Hedgehogs love cat or dog food, scrambled eggs and, as a special treat, rusks soaked in goat’s milk, as they are unable to digest cows’ milk properly. All of these treats are prepared in the centre’s kitchen, which is just along from the ‘other animals’ ward. Making up a load of delicious food, all served on plant-pot saucers, was a lot of fun. I enjoyed being chef to 30 little creatures!

The hedgehogs were easy to work with, too, as long as you managed to avoid the spines and didn’t mind the vast amount of faeces that came out of them, no matter how much or how little they ate. The birds, on the other hand, well, they could be a bit of a challenge, especially the collared doves. And there were a lot of collared doves.

Pigeons and doves are very similar; they all belong to the bird family Columbidae, though traditionally the name dove tends to be used for the smaller species and pigeon for the larger ones. I hadn’t had a lot of experience of working with birds before I went to Folly, but during my time there I learned a lot more about them and it really helped my confidence in interacting with them. I hadn’t ever thought much of pigeons, but since being around lots of them I have discovered that they’re friendly, silly birds that you can’t help liking.

Even more surprising is that the different varieties have very different personalities. The collared doves are notoriously naughty and not very bright. They’re like thoroughbred horses: no brains and lots of energy. The second you opened their cages they would shoot out, which made it extremely hard to treat them. Each time one of them escaped the receptionist would yell, ‘Windows!’ and we’d all race to shut every window and door to stop the bird getting out. Then we’d face the tricky job of recapturing it, which usually took at least 10 minutes and often required the use of a net, which stood propped up in the corner ready for this all-too-common scenario.

When they weren’t escaping the collared doves were trying to peck you. I had to handle one with a swollen eye – it had a virus known as pox and it needed eye drops. Many of the other birds needed oral medication and, after a few unsuccessful attempts, thanks to Heather I learned a good way of holding the head so that the bird couldn’t move or peck me. I put two fingers on either side of the beak and two fingers behind the head. Not only did it keep them still, it allowed me to open the beak so that I could pop medicine in for the ones that needed oral medication or to feed those that weren’t eating properly.

The wood pigeons were a whole lot easier. Their main concern was food, so far from trying to escape they would settle in happily for the free feeds. They’d quickly get the idea that we would hand-feed them when they were sick, and started begging like dogs, especially the younger ones, jumping up and down at the front of the cage, making a squawking racket. Then, when you took them out, they would happily open their mouths wide ready for food.

While some breeds of pigeon were common at Folly, a racing pigeon was a rare sight, so when one was brought in one morning we all crowded round to have a look. Larger and far more slender than the other pigeons, this bird looked like pigeon royalty. There was nothing wrong with him, apart from the fact that he had got lost and a member of the public had caught him and brought him in, thinking he must belong to someone since he had a ring on his leg. The ID on the ring was bringing up no results, which was perhaps a good thing; pigeon racing is a competitive sport and many racers don’t have the space to keep pigeons that get lost or aren’t fit enough to complete the distance, so if his owner had been traced the fate of the pigeon might have been quite uncertain. Instead, the pigeon was boarded while we waited to see if an owner would come forward. If not, the ring would be removed and the pigeon would either be allowed to live out his days in the large aviaries on site, which are for birds that cannot be rereleased, or rehomed.

Many of the wild pigeons brought in to Folly were suffering from canker, or trichomonas. It’s a horrible disease in which white clots build up in the bird’s throat that prevent it from swallowing or breathing properly. Eighty per cent of pigeons carry the organism, but they don’t all become infected. When the birds become stressed the organism can multiply and a mild infection can turn into a serious condition.

Pigeons with canker have to be given antibiotics and need to be crop-fed, which means their food has to be pushed past the clots and into the bird’s crop, which is the muscular pouch near the gullet or throat. The crop is basically an expanded part of the oesophagus and it’s used to temporarily store food.

Learning to crop-feed was another bird-handling skill I acquired at Folly. The receptionist, Poppy, an elderly lady of great character, was particularly helpful with this one.

‘When the crop feels like a scrotum you’ve got the food in properly,’ she said breezily.

‘A-ha, thanks,’ I said, laughing so hard I almost dropped the tube of mashed Weetabix mixed with recovery formula that I was using to feed a small wood pigeon.

But not all birds needed hand-feeding, many could feed themselves on bird seed, depending on their age and the severity of their injury or disease.

Birds would often come in with injuries after being mauled by cats. One family arrived with a baby collared dove that had puncture wounds all over its back. The poor little thing was traumatised. We cleaned the wounds and treated them with antibiotics, and as we did so I learned a useful tip from the animal care assistants at Folly; they would take an antibiotic capsule meant for swallowing, open it up and sprinkle the powder on the bird’s wounds. It was an unconventional method, but it worked extremely well.

Like the hedgehogs, the pigeons are rehabilitated and released back into the wild whenever possible. The members of the public who bring them in the first place are usually happy to take them back and release them in the place where they were found, which is the best approach for the animals.

The pigeons were hard work, but the biggest challenge I faced at Folly was in fact a large male pheasant. He was big and strong and he did not like being in captivity. He had an injured leg – a healing fracture – and he needed pain relief and rest, but every time I opened his cage to give him his medication and check on his leg, or give his cage a bit of a clean, he made a break for it. In that moment, he always forgot about his painful leg – escape was the only thing on his mind. He was so strong and flapped his wings so hard that it was difficult to get near him; even when I did catch him with my hands, he was so strong and powerful that he regularly managed to break away, so I ended up having to herd him back into his cage, shooing and clapping behind him while the other workers cut off all available exits.

The pheasant was not happy, but after several weeks at Folly his leg had healed and he was ready for release. Folly is situated in a beautiful forest, so it was decided that he could be released into a new habitat, away from roads or any areas in which pheasant hunting is common. I was given the privilege of letting him go, so after battling to get him into a cat carrier, I walked him down the driveway. He was not impressed. I felt him battering the box from the inside, but when I got to the edge of the wood I set the box on the ground and opened the door. Sprinting out, flapping his wings, he took flight for 10 metres or so, before hitting the ground and disappearing at top speed into the darkness of the wood. Watching him fly away was a wonderful feeling.

Folly is an amazing resource; I loved volunteering there and have gone back since to take them a baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest at the stables where my horses are kept. The little thing had hit its head, which was swollen, but with a bit of Folly’s tender and expert care it recovered and, too young to be released, stayed to be hand-reared at the centre until it was big enough to fend for and feed itself.

One afternoon, after a morning at Folly, I set off to visit my friend Lucy, who was living in a small village in West Sussex. Lucy and I had met at the RVC in our third year and in our final year we’d been in the same rotation group of five students, sharing all our core placements.

We’d been close friends ever since. Lucy is an amazing person; a brilliant and talented vet as well as clever and forthright and a lot of fun. It was Lucy who kept me sane during the toughest moments of our training, and Lucy who commiserated with me when things went wrong.

After we graduated Lucy had headed straight for farm work, winning a highly sought-after internship with a small farm-based veterinary practice that would, hopefully, lead to a permanent job. She was only an hour away from my family’s home, so we’d promised to meet up often, but in the weeks since graduation we’d both been so busy that three months had gone by before we could find a time to get together. I was longing to see her and looking forward to catching up.

Lucy was living in a pretty little terraced house with a cottagey feel to it that she shared with another vet and the black cocker spaniel she had bought soon after we graduated. She’d called him Renly, after her favourite character in Game of Thrones, and he was gorgeous and cuddly but very, very naughty. He had just been castrated and Lucy said she was feeling very sorry for him, but he didn’t appear to be suffering – he was leaping everywhere and making inroads into the kitchen bin every time Lucy turned her back, so that the house rang with constant cries of, ‘Renly, no!’

Over a delicious dinner and a glass of wine, Lucy told me all about her new life. She had settled into the practice and was becoming part of the farm community and I could see how much she was enjoying it. She said she was working hard, going from farm to farm with Renly tucked into a crate in the back of her car, but the work was what she had always enjoyed most, and she was being given lots of support by the vets in the practice.

Lucy was full of stories about her work. One of the funniest was about a pig called Patsy that appeared to be so ill it couldn’t stand up. Lucy arrived at the farm with a vet student in tow and examined the pig, taking its temperature with a thermometer up its backside. It was clearly unwell and she suspected pneumonia, but when she went to inject it with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories the pig, which weighed all of 200 kilos, suddenly leaped to its feet, the needle still stuck in its rump, and shot straight into a bush from which it refused to emerge. Clearly after the indignity of the thermometer, the injection was a step too far. After failing to chase the pig out, Lucy and the vet student stood in the field trying to tempt it out with apples and bran mash, at which point Lucy finally managed to retrieve her syringe and make a hasty exit.

It was lovely to spend an evening with Lucy; she made me laugh, gave me a great meal and reminded me of how precious good friends are. I was so pleased for her that she had settled into country life, but I couldn’t help thinking how different our lives were now, with Lucy in a stable job with a house and a dog, while the next year for me was going to be filled with travelling, both in the UK and abroad.

In the end, though, I decided that both options were exciting, just in different ways.

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