2011 in Review – 859 Animals Admitted

2011 has been an extremely busy year for us, with many highlights and successes, but a very difficult year in terms of the huge volume of unwanted animals we were asked to take in, unfortunately we had no choice but to turn many away.

In the year, we have admitted 859 animals, a full breakdown of all animals can be found on our website, in summary these are;

We took in 131 pets and re-homed 89 into life-long homes
Cared for 488 farm animals, including over 300 ex- battery chickens destined for slaughter
We rescued 7 ponies and a horse, re-homing 4 of them
We have taken in 4 pigs and re-homed 7
Taken in 239 wild animals (169 birds and 70 mammals). Of these over 100 have been released back into the wild

We are always full at the sanctuary, unfortunately we turn animals away every day of the week. In our care we have;

9 Pigs
6 ponies
1 horse
1 bull
6 Sheep
4 geese
100+ chickens & 12 Cockerels
5 hedgehogs
30 wild birds
31 rabbits
4 Ducks
2 mice

Successes

We have had two successful open days, with over 1600 visiting us and raising over £7,000
The Charity Shop Expectations opened, raising over £4,000 for us
We received planning permission to build a wild animal hospital

Highlights

January

We were on BBC1 Inside Out, covering the trend of so called `Micro-Pigs’ and the resultant escalation in people wanting to give them up. This year hardly a week has gone by without us receiving a call to take on more. In fact in November, we received requests to take on 14 in one week alone! Every one was turned down, we can only do so much.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/01/26/24-jan-at-730-pm-see-our-pig-rescue-on-bbc1-inside-out/

February

Gerard and Walter, two Pot Bellied pigs that had been with us for three years, had finally been re-homed.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/02/13/gerard-walter-move-to-their-new-home/

March

We rescued another 3 Dartmoor Ponies destined to be slaughtered for pet food. All three were wormed, vaccinated, gelded and slowly turned into tame ponies before being rehomed.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/03/19/urgent-dartmoor-pony-appeal/

April

We took in three fox cubs in April that were hand reared and 2 were later released in the Autumn. Although animal rescue brings many highs there are also many, many lows and Daisy the fox cub was no exception. She came in as a tiny fox cub and our trustee and vet nurse Keyley took her on when it became apparent that Daisy did not interact with the other cubs and had neuroligical problems. Keyley spent hours and hours nursing Daisy and hand rearing her but eventually had to make the heart wrenching decision to put Daisy to sleep.

May

We rescued ex-battery hen number 200.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/05/21/battery-hen-rescue-5/

June

We were busy hand rearing dozens of animals, including this little hoglet. The hand rearing season runs from February through to September and seems to get longer and more demanding every year.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/06/08/baby-hoglets/

July

During a 3 hour rescue, the Fire Brigade helped us release this huge hedgehog that had fallen into an open pipe and trapped for several days. We treated him for dehydration and released him a few weeks later in a safer place.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/07/10/epic-hedgehog-rescue/

August

We took in more kittens and cats (11 kittens and two cats), some were actually dumped on our doors step, whilst we were at work! Although our planning permission does not permit us to take in cats we know that cat rescue centres were absolutely full to capacity with huge waiting lists so we had no choice but to get the latest waifs and strays combi-tested, wormed, vaccinated, microchipped and neutered.

http://brinsleyanimalrescue.org/2011/08/21/kittens-kittens-kittens/