Sick and injured hedgehogs are vulnerable to fly strike (Myiasis). It is extremely important that you get help quickly.
Fly strike refers to when flies lay their eggs on a sick or injured animal. The eggs hatch into maggots which then eat away at the flesh of the still living creature.
We have hoglets! They came overnight last Friday night/Saturday morning.
Mothers and babies are doing well.
Duncan is back from the vets now, having had his left hind leg amputated.
He will have a course of antibiotics to fight off any infection, and pain relief.
The notes from the vet state that he has been eating well, and has been to loo, which is important after an operation.
Flystrike (Myiasis) is a painful, sometimes fatal, condition caused by flies laying eggs on another animal, usually in wounds or on sick animals.
We receive many cases of hogs suffering with flystrike, and it is a very time consuming job to clean it off manually. Because of this, we have purchased a portable suction machine which will help us clean hogs with fly strike, among other things
We have another victim of entrapment/constriction injury.
This hog was seen on cctv playback, and noticed there was something wrong with its back left leg.
We were sent the video by Neil, who told us that he would try and catch the hog that night, which luckily he was able to do, and we collected it straight away.
We have had a really busy weekend and Bank holiday, with several hogs with fly strike on their wounds that needed cleaning.
Amongst several hogs that came on was this female, who came in to us this evening after having been found out in daylight when the homeowner went out to see what his dog was barking at, and found her not moving.
Update on Mabel the hog with constriction injuries ….
On Friday she came back to us after spending 24 hours with our vet. During that time she was anesthetised to enable her gaping throat wound to be cleaned and debrided. She also has laser treatment to speed up the healing process.
No sooner finished one hog with fly strike, and another comes in.
This one was brought to us from Blandford, having been found trapped in plastic. The finder cut the hog free and brought it straight to us.
This poor hogs ears were packed solid with flies eggs, and it has a garrote type wound about its neck that was also covered in eggs.
Bit of a nasty one this.
We had a juvenile male hog dropped off this afternoon, following a call asking if we could take it. We were told that it was in a bad way with a head wound, dehydrated, had flies all over it and smelled.
He had been found yesterday, but not handed in until today. At this time of year, it takes approx 4 hours from flies eggs being laid until the maggots hatch. If we’d had this chap yesterday we could have saved him a lot of pain and discomfort.
Tiny Pikachu trying his first solids, a mix of Esbilac and Hills a/d. His teeth are now starting to appear.
He seemed more interested in the lid (off a small jar) at first, then seemed to realise the meat was there and was tasty 😀 He polished off the whole lot in the end.
This should mean we can go longer between feeds now, which Tracy will be happy about.
It’s nice holding them to feed them, but better when they can feed themselves.
