The Hog Diaries - The Most Amazing and Magnificent Miss Lily Chester

Arrival Day. March 13th

Miss Lily Chester.

What can I say?

This story of this little animal is quite remarkable.

As you can see she arrived in the most appalling state.

She arrived on the 13th of March 2015, weighing just 363gms and had advanced mange - one of the worst I've seen.
She had 3 maggots in her right ear as well as a purulent discharge from it, there was a  'Hairy Blow Fly' maggot deep in a  mange crack on her shoulder and an infected hole in her left shoulder.

She was a mess, to put it lightly.

All relevant and necessary meds were started immediately and I gave Lily an oil treatment to start softening the thick and restrictive mange crust that completely covered her.

March 15th. the crust is coming off and we can see eyes!

March 14th

 

March 15th

Initially I couldn't see what sex Lily was as the mange crust was very thick and completely covered her whole body. Her rescuer's daughter had said that if the hoggie was a boy it was 'Chester' and is a girl it was Lily. For the first 5 days I was pretty sure that the hoggie was a boy, so Chester it was, but then Opps! It's a girl, so she became Miss Lily Chester. 

March 17th

From the very beginning Miss LC proved herself to be a bright wee thing, happily sleeping on her heat pad and snuggling up in the nest inside her Hogspital box. She preferred biscuits to wet food and merrily polished off her dinner every single night without fail, making very healthy weight gains from the first night and never slowed down. 

March 17th

March 20th - 7 days since admission

By March 23rd - day 10, she was trashing her crate which is a good sign as it indicates the recovering hog has some extra energy to burn. She accepted her medication with no fuss and just got on with the business of getting well with consummate professionalism and was really cheeky. Quite a little character, it was incredible to watch just how quickly she was improving! I'd never seen anything like it before .... or since ... 

March 21st

April 3rd - Day 21

April 3rd

The 26th - Day 13, saw Miss LC graduate off her heatpad and on the 30th - day 17, she moved outside into a hutch. By the April 3rd - Day 21, her new quills started arriving and her fur was growing back FAST!

April 10th - Look at that fat, fluffy tummy!

The 10th of April - Day 28 saw a literal forest of new quills in evidence and a Miss LC who now  weighed 917gms. This wee girl was NOT mucking around, that's for sure! 

On April the 21st - Day 39, Miss LC stopped eating and over the next fews days she dropped a bit of weight. Because her quills were almost at the perfect length for release, I made the decision to let her go - she was obviously starting to get stressed with captivity and was ready for FREEDOM! 

April 24th - Day 42

On April 24th - Day 42, exactly 6 weeks from her admission day and weighing a chubby 953gms, Miss LC was released into my garden after being carefully marked with some nail polish on the tips of her quills and being given a topical dose of medicine to prevent mange. 

However, the story does not end there! 

I next saw Miss LC on Oct 30th - 6 months after her release date. Asleep in one of my Hogstel sleeping boxes, she had survived her first winter in the wild. She was a good size and had no signs of mange so I didn't disturb her other than to retouch her ID marks. 

On Dec 29th I heard feasting going on in a feeder box and had a look to see who it was - yup, it was Miss LC. MY eyes nearly popped out of my head at the size of her so I scooped her up to weigh her. She tipped the scales at 1328gms!!! A gain of nearly 400gms since her release. I suspected that she might just be pregnant... 

Jan 10th 2016 saw her fast aslepp in the Hogstel again and I just left her to it. A month later on Feb 14th she was back in the sleeping box and impossibly, was even bigger. I gently got her up and weighted her. When I saw the number I decided that we might need to rename her Sumo Hog! She was now 1544gms. Beautiful, perfect, healthy, happy, friendly and fully able to curl up properly. Just HUMONGOUS!

Feb 25th 2016 - Early photo for comparison

By this time I had bought and installed an infrared wildlife camera by the most poplar feeding box and on Feb 25th I struck GOLD! My over night photo showed a VERY large Hedgehog visiting the feeder multiple times and SQUEEEEEZING its way into the box. There was only one hog I know that is that big, so I'm certain that is was Miss LC. 

Miss LC was seen and checked again on April 23th when she weighed 931gms - so she must have been heavily pregnant when I had last seen her, and then again on June 10th weighing 1082gms at which time I microchipped her. She had been sleeping in one of the Hogstel boxes for over a month and this was quite late to be awake in the winter. Soon after she disappeared for her winter's hibernation, and I hoped I hadn't scared her off by microchipping her.

2017 rolled around and I was pretty busy with my current prickly charges. By this stage I had 3 feeder boxes and 3 sleeping boxes and early in the evening of Feb 10th I went out to the feeder in the back garden and on opening it up I got the fright of my life! There inside was a MASSIVE hedgehog.... Knowing what the result would be - after all, there's only ONE hoggie that is THAT big, I rushed inside to grab a blanket and gently hoisted the hog out of the box. I brought it inside to weigh, check over and scan with my microchip scanner. BINGO!!! It WAS Miss LC. She weighed 1100gms, was in absolutely PERFECT health and was as happy as ever to see me - uncurling in my hands, having a sniff and saying hello. Grinning like a crazy loon I took her back outside and put her back to bed. 

She doesn't look that big in the photo - but the box is 40cm across ... 

She was back again on Feb 27th, this time weighing in at 1293gms. This was a familiar scenario! She stayed sleeping in the feeder box for a good few weeks until I decided it needed cleaning out one day and she decided that a clean, poo free Hogstel room was NOT to her liking thank you VERY much and moved on later that night.

I hope the Miss Lily Chester Chronicles continue for the next few years to come. It is such a privilege  and is truly awe inspiring to witness her living so successfully in the wild. What an amazing girl!