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The mammal day — caring for hedgehogs and squirrels
Vacation blog from wildlife rehabilitation centre
This story was written in a wildlife rehabilitation center called Pomorski Ośrodek Rehabilitacji Dzikich Zwierząt „Ostoja”. To support Ostoja, you can donate here or here. The sites are in Polish, but you can use the Google Translate browser plugin. You can also use my PayPal and write “Ostoja” in the wire comment along with your email, and I’ll send you a confirmation that your donation was transferred to Ostoja.
There aren’t only birds in this rehabilitation centre. The numbers show that there are mostly birds, but if we’re to count the number of times the laundry machine was turned on because of an animal, it would be because of hedgehogs.
The hedgehogs here are divided into two groups — young and adult. Adults are here because of some injury, they are fed once a day and await their release as soon as their health condition allows them to leave.
Young hedgehogs are fed more often, and every morning their weight is noted to see if they grow as expected and to slowly move into the older group. Young hedgehogs have additional heating installed in their boxes as they have not enough fat to keep themselves warm.
When a hedgehog is very young, they sometimes need to be fed by the bottle. Then, after feeding them, you’ll need to massage their belly to give some help to their urinary system. If they don’t receive such weirdly sounding help, their urinary tract will get blocked and they will die.
A bit different small mammal arrived today — a young squirrel. It’s so young that it doesn’t open its eyes yet, and needs to be bottle-fed every 3 hours. I’ve just fed her, and now I’m going to bed for 3 hours to get some sleep before the next weighting, feeding, and massaging.
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