Friends Of Holy Trinity Church, Meldreth Registered Charity No. 289736
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Liz, from the Hedgehog Hospital based at the Shepreth Wildlife Conservation Charity, passed around photographs and gave an interesting talk on her knowledge and experience with hedgehogs, which soon developed in to an open forum discussion.

A few of the many facts we learned were that:

1. The hospital typically handles between 500 and 800 admissions per yaer, and aims to return the hedgehogs to the area where they were found, once they are healthy.
2. Warm autumns lead to late litters of hoglets, which may then try to hibernate when only two months old and may weigh only 200 grammes. Unless a hedgehog is at least 600 grammes when hibernating, it will not survive the the winter without specialist care, and even then not all survive.
3. Three local villages have become "Hedgehog friendly", having many accessible gardens; the hedgehos will roam up to 1.5 miles a night.
4. Any hedgehog out in daytime is in trouble and without rescue will probably die that day.

At the conclusion, Liz was congratulated on her interesting talk and said she was donating her speaker's fee to the charity. Both the Friends and a member of the audience donated bags of hedgehog food. The hospital is always grateful for any donations of newspapers for bedding, food - they eat hedgehog food, cat food (not fish based), dog food (without gravy) - and money, to help them continue with their valuable work.