Hello, my name is Zoe and I have volunteered at Leyland Hedgehog Rescue for nearly a year now. I have seen first hand how hard Mary and all the other volunteers work painstakingly removing things like maggots, ticks, fleas, cleaning horrendous wounds and giving life saving medications and fluids. Not to mention cleaning all the poo!

One of many problems that we have is that it is very hard, if not impossible, to tell whether a female hedgehog found in spring/summer is pregnant. It would be incredibly useful information to know because, as in humans, there are a lot of medications and treatments that could harm the unborn babies. For example this year a female hedgehog came in with ringworm and was therefore treated with antifungal medication. Unfortunately she then gave birth and the babies suffered after a few weeks with the knock on effects of their mothers medication. If we would have had an ultrasound machine we could have identified the pregnancy and delayed the ringworm treatment.

Pregnant females are also often out in the day preparing nests and are therefore more likely to be brought in unnecessarily. If we could quickly scan them and find they were pregnant we could get them back to their nests as soon as possible. This is very important because if a hedgehog feels stressed and threatened when they give birth (as they often do in captivity) they will sometimes eat their own babies and nobody wants that!

I hope I have explained why an ultrasound machine would be very useful. Unfortunately they are very expensive. I think we need a scan x with microconvex probe or scanpad 2025 with microconvex probe (other suggestions welcome) both around £3,000! I know its a lot but if enough people give a little bit we could do it!