This is a post from WRAS but applies equally to us and other rescues. Thought it was worth posting here, partly because it saves me a lot of typing
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East Sussex WRAS
With the warmer days that we are having at the moment some of you who have passed hogs onto us for treatment & rehab may be wondering when they will be returning to you.
At the moment the weather is too unpredictable & we certainly wont be looking to start releasing any of the hogs who came in as youngsters until the end of the month & only then if the night time temperatures and long range forecast is good. Most of the hogs we have in over the Winter came in as babies or juveniles so will have little or no experience of nest building, so we can't run the risk of the weather changing & them getting caught out with no shelter.
Even if released with hog boxes there is no guarantee they will stick around to use them, some do & others disappear on the first night & never return to the garden they were released in. At present I think we have 110 hogs in care. We carefully mark & keep records of who is who so that they can be returned to the gardens they came from. So if you have passed one to us be on the alert for a call from me in the next month to arrange bringing it back to you.
Some of the hogs who came in very small will be released with runs & houses & you will be asked to feed them for a couple of weeks in the run before releasing them with their box, then popping food down for a while, while they find their feet. We always bring you some food when we return the hogs. Others who came in older will be released back into the garden directly, but again with food being put down for them. This is why it is so important to return them to where they were found as they will have some idea of where the local food sources and dangers are.
We are always surprised at least a couple of times in Spring when people refuse to allow the hogs to be released back in their gardens & are sometimes quite rude about it. Sadly if you handed a hog into a vets which was then passed onto us & didn't leave your details then we have to find a new location for the hog to be soft released to, with a friend who is from that location as well. This luckily works well, but it is not ideal, and delays the release process.
About 40 of our hogs are well up to weight for release as soon as the weather is stable, although some of them are still asleep oblivious to the approaching Spring. Another third of them are nearly there as well, with the rest still putting on weight or on treatment. Kathy
Wed Mar 06, 2013 2:29 pm