As the year draws to a close thank you for all your support

He wants to raise enough money to buy 10 hedgehog houses and bedding to enable us to overwinter and care for poorly hedgehogs.

He is aiming for £800 which will go a long way to help us overwinter the disadvantaged hedgehogs born too late in the year to hibernate.

On average it costs more than £130 to overwinter a single hedgehogs taking into account veterinary bills, food, accommodation, bedding and the process of rehabilitation and release back to the wild in the spring.

If you would like to contribute towards Stephen’s appeal please go to https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/MPsChristmasAppeal18

A little hedgehog has been admitted from Newhaven, found wandering across a road.

A healthy little girl but weighing just 200grams, way too small to be hibernating.

She didn’t hesitate over tucking into her dinner.

Please remember that if you find an underweight hedgehog (below 600grams) they need some help.

Please phone our rescue line and leave a message if we don’t answer.

Place them in a secure box somewhere cosy and warm.

We will then advise you what to do.

We may advise returning them to the wild depending on weather patterns and weight, but if too low we are likely to admit the hedgehog for testing for parasites as this is a common cause of hedgehogs being too small to hibernate.

A hedgehog with an internal parasite problem may look healthy but whilst the hedgehog is in hibernating, the parasites will take hold and cause major problems when the hedgehog tries to wake up in the spring.

A tiny young grass snake has come in from Fairwarp after being found on a doorstep.

Rescuers collected the 16 centimetre baby grass snake and took it back to the hospital.

Annette at Folly Wildlife Rescue has been contacted and she has very kindly agreed to over winter the youngster as they have a lot more experience than us with doing so.

A very sick fox was admitted on Sunday afternoon from Southbourne Road, Eastbourne.

Our vet team and care team have been battling to save him.

On admission the fox was very hypothermic and dehydrated.

Vet Mike place the fox on IV fluids and he is being gently warmed.

It is illegal to place rat poison in a position where it could harm anything other than the target pest species.

Sadly by the time we normally are called to these cases the poison has been in the animal’s body for far too long and they don’t normally survive.

But we will always try our best.

Over the next few weeks I am going to look back at 2018 at some of the rescues and incidents we have dealt with.

2018 has been a challenging year for WRAS.

Yet more expansion work has taken place.

But this summer ended up being the busiest in history yet again, every year it increases.

However, this year has seen WRAS staff hit breaking point.

This summer ended up with both Chris and I becoming ill as a result of the hours we were working on call through the night.

However much we want to, it is really hard to live on just two to three hours of sleep a night. This led to us having to temporarily close down our night time service after 10pm, in order to cope.

I feel so guilty about doing so, but at the moment it is just too much for Chris and I to cope with and not something that just anyone can pick up and help with unless they have been trained well enough to do so.

Normally we would have manage to get a newsletter out before Christmas but this just hasn’t been possible as I have been ill and off work recently, which has been the cause of my irregular publication of my column.

This week we have been able to start using properly our veterinary theatre.

It has taken quite a while for this to get up and running, but we have finally managed it.

Thank you everyone who has contributed towards this.

I would also like to thank everyone who came along to our Christmas Fair at East Dean.

Thank you so much for your support.