Thanks Nic, to be honest, I’ve been careful but not thorough – now I am being thorough – so what I’ve said on the posts since last night – it’s stuff that I’m learning for myself, so I’m probably saying stuff that people are already doing, but for me, I’m learning this for myself.
But I’ve found looking after Sweetpea (the one with lungworm) really enjoyable – I do actually enjoy ‘mucking out’ , I’d love to volunteer and muck out in the mornings at the hedgehog hospital, but it’s a 45min drive away, and have to ask mum to drive me their as I only use public transport. So it’s not ideal, I have to win the lottery tonight, then I could get a taxi there and back each morning!
I was using a separate dish towel to dry the dishes, but just realised that I could just use kitchen roll, it would be safer that way. I never considered – when I first got the hedgehog house, and started feeding them, that I would have to treat them like a doctor would looking after patients – but that is how it’s like.
I had a house rabbit called Fudge, he had the whole house to use plus garden, (lived at mum’s then), and he slept in the same bedroom as me as rabbits are very sociable and feel more secure when their warren is around them, (he loved night times, more than day times when I was at work, due to the company), and because his main diet consisted of mostly hay, and then veg, I never wore gloves, but always washed hands before and after mucking out – but with wildlife, especially hedgehogs, it’s a totally different case.
That’s something that I should have known really, given that I’ve volunteered at an animal sanctuary (pigs, sheep, guinea pigs and rabbits). But at the animal sanctuary we were never given surgical gloves to wear.
For my hedgehogs I’ve always put gardening gloves on to put their food dishes out and bring them back in, and use rubber gloves when I’m cleaning out the feeding station (I’ll still continue to use rubber gloves as I’d get burnt from the water eitherwise).
But with gardening gloves, mine have fabric on the top of them, and so they aren’t as hygienic as they could be, so now I’m only gonna use gardening gloves if I have to weigh them, and now I’m using small animal disinfectant, cleaning with kitchen roll after I’ve picked them up, because surgical gloves are much better.
I’ve also ordered two more kidney shaped Riverside hedgehog water bowls from Amazon, so what I’m gonna start doing, (each day I’ve been washing their bowls in hot water with washing up liquid), but now I’m gonna start putting a puppy mat down in the feeding station, dispose of it each morning and wash down with boiling water, and then replace the two feeding bowls (one water, one for food), with the new ones, and fill the kitchen sink with boiling water from the kettle and leave the dirty bowls to steralise for a few hours, then wash them as I would normally, and then dry with kitchen roll.
I’m sorry if I’m preaching to the converted, it just that I wasn’t one of the converted ones, I’m clean, but not as thorough as I could be – it starts now, and I’m just writing on here, the advice I’m giving myself. I don’t mean to be patronising!
