Station Road, Beckford, Nr Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 7AN Tel: 01386 882288 Email: info@valewildlife.org.uk Registered Charity No: 702888

Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre

Aviaries & Enclosures

We call this building the Badger Pens although it
is used for foxes, hedgehogs, deer and otters
too from time to time.
There are four enclosures inside, each with an
infra-red heat light and they all have access out
into grassed paddocks.
They are great for fox cubs once they are big
enough to leave the actual hospital building and in
the winter, once all the cubs have gone, we can
keep 8 or 10 hedgehogs in each one.

This building, which has grassed enclosures attached can be used for foxes, badgers, deer, otters and hedgehogs.
About Vale
Meet the Staff
Vale's Facilities
Bird Room
Small Mammals
Brooder Room
Treatment Room
This is one of the enclosures used for our permanent foxes. We scatter food around so that they have to work to get it and we change the logs and ramps around from time to time to help with enrichment.

Below are some examples of the aviaries we use for the final stage of birds rehabilitation.
Once their treatments are all finished, birds need to spend at least a week in an aviary to build up their muscles and strength before they can be released back to the wild.
The green netting and camouflage nets we use on some aviaries help to shield the birds from seeing the staff working around them and therefore they reduce stress.

Other Rooms
Education & Training
Some of our aviaries are covered in netting or camouflage material to help to reduce stress.

The fox cubs that we rear each year, normally between 20 - 30, are released in late July or early August. They go out to release pens in groups of 4 to 6 cubs, onto private land. After about a week of being fed in the pen, the door is opened and the cubs are released but feeding continues until they are self-sufficient.

Above - one of our fox pens.
We have two similar ones for our resident foxes, imprinted animals that have been hand- reared
by people and are therefore not releasable.
Another, larger pen is used for fox cubs,
away from people, until they are ready for
release in July or August.

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Aviaries

Left & below left - our Hedgehog Unit, completed in March 2012.
This unit will accomodate over 120 hedgehogs and can also be used for
other animals. During the winter months we regularly care for over
150 hogs for the entire winter.

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badger cub 18 march 2011.2

Below - our Mammal Rearing Unit, well away from the main hustle
& bustle of the wildlife hospital. Mainly used for fox & badger cubs, only one member of staff tends to this building and no talking is allowed inside it. This is to help to minimise the risk of imprinting, as an imprinted animal is a non-releasable animal.

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