At Brinsley Animal Rescue we rescue and care for hundreds of animals each year, however there are always more animals that need our help.

However we have a number of limiting factors including funds and volunteers. If you would like to help us, there are numerous ways in which you can offer your time;

We have no full time staff or paid staff, we are all volunteers so please do not apply for a paid position.

We cannot offer work experience as we have no one here on a full time basis to oversee students.   We advise those that are genuinely interested in pursuing careers in animal welfare to volunteer but we cannot offer a whole week in a single block.

Before you consider volunteering, please think about the following;

• Hard Work – We are not a zoo or fun farm, we do want our volunteers to enjoy themselves but please remember it is hard work, which has to be done 365 days a year in all weathers.
• Reliability - If you say that you are coming, please do. The sanctuary is adjacent to our home and we can’t wait for people who don’t arrive.  If we know that volunteers are coming to help out, we can get on with other work, so it is important that you turn up or at least let us know if things have changed.
• Age – We do not put an age limit on volunteering, however we do not have the time to supervise children under the age of 16 and so they must be accompanied by their parent or guardian at all times. As well as the animals safety, there are hazards here which children need to be protected against.

Please don’t let us put you off, if you love animals and are not intimidated by hard work you will love it here and we will always welcome your help.

If you have any concerns or questions, please give us a call and we’ll be happy to discuss, we are very approachable and friendly (usually!!).




Volunteers Tasks

• Animal Welfare
  Each and every day there are dozens of cages to clean out and over a hundred animals to feed, water and check over. We also like to spend time with our animals to enrich their lives, assess their personalities to prepare them for rehoming and to tame them.

• Home Checker
  We check every home whenever we look at rehoming animals. Many animals come to us because the previous owners have not cared for them or considered the consequences of taking on the responsibility of looking after an animal, we don’t want our animals to end up like this.
  We need people to carry out simple checks in local areas, part of this service is to offer new pet owners good advice.

• Wildlife Carers
  Sometimes – particularly at spring – we get inundated with baby bird chicks, but we also take on squirrels, wild rabbits and hedgehogs. So if you have experience or want to be trained let us know.

• Project Work
  As we are still very much developing the rescue centre, there are always many chores from erecting fencing to repairing cages.

• Fund Raiser
  We need over £20,000 a year to carry on the vital work we do, without the funds we can do nothing.

Volunteers Procedure

For at least the first 3 visits you will have to be shown what to do and this takes up a lot of our time. Therefore, we start volunteers off on relatively easy tasks such as mucking out stables and poo picking the fields. As volunteers prove themselves, we will invest more time to train you in other tasks.

If you are interested in learning more, or have a few questions, please contact us


Apply for volunteer position: