Mitcheldean's Samantha is helping ‘little prickles’ get better at home rescue centre

EVEN poorly hedgehogs need a weekly dose of local news - just ask the patients at Samantha’s Little Prickles in Mitcheldean.

The Forester and The Review regularly donate our old newspapers to the rescue to put down in the hedgehogs’ pens as they undergo their rehabilitation.

Veterinary nurse Samantha McCauley, who runs the rescue voluntarily at her home in Mitcheldean, is appealing to others in the community to help in any way they can, as she prepares to move into new, fit-for-purpose premises.

Samatha started the rescue in 2021 whilst completing a placement year for her degree at a vets practice in Ledbury.

She offered to take home hedgehogs that been brought in to the practice for treatment when the local rescues couldn’t take them.

She completed a basic course on rehabilitation which was put on by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society at Vale Wildlife Hospital in Tewkesbury, but has acquired more specialist knowledge about their care - from medication to analysing their poo using a microscope - through her own experiences since.

Initially self-funded, Samantha was able to source basic equipment and provide space for the hedgehogs to stay in her house and garage.

But she soon found self-funding wasn’t feasible with the amount of equipment and medication that was needed, especially as the number of patients grew.

Samantha explained: “For my degree I did a one-year placement unpaid, so I was topping up my student loan by working night shifts for the NHS.

”When I started the rescue, I found I was actually working more nightshifts to pay for the hedgehogs!”

“It got to the point where I was really tired, so I put a plea out on Facebook asking if people could donate old newspapers and blankets, and that’s when people started asking me if they could donate financially.”

At the time she didn’t want to accept financial contributions because she wasn’t sure how the rescue was going to progress.

But while all other resources could be donated, medication proved a stumbling block, so Samatha set up as a non-profit organisation so that she could take monetary donations to pay for it.

Samantha said: “At that point it went a little bit crazy, at one point I had 17 hedgehogs.

“I was getting up at half four in the morning, cleaning them all out, and then going to do my placement.”

At her home, where she cares for an average of 10 hedgehogs at a time, the very sick ones are placed in incubators inside the house, before being moved into cages with a heat mat in her garage when they start getting better.

They are then released back into the wild once they’ve made a full recovery.

Samantha does minimal handling with the hedgehogs except for those who need regular medication, so she has cameras set up inside each cage so that she can monitor them.

The rescue is part of the Gloucestershire Hedgehog Network and is the only one in the Forest, after Newent Hedgehog Rescue closed during the Covid pandemic.

Now, Samantha is looking  to expand by moving the rescue to new, fit-for-purpose premises and taking on more volunteers, as well as eventually obtaining official charity status.

She’s currently in the planning phase for the new premises and plans to fundraise for it over the coming months.

She’s also appealing to local tradespeople to give her quotes to erect and fit out the large insulated shed so that she can draw up a budget for the project.

"The plan is to purchase a large shed big enough to allow me to have everything in one place. This will give me more space and storage with the hope in the future be able to admit more hogs and have more volunteers", she explained.

Anyone interested in helping Samantha is asked to get in touch via her Facebook page.