Winter feed and heating for 240 rescued animals

Two seizures, eight weeks, and a barn that is nearly empty

Willow Creek normally runs at around a hundred and forty animals. In the last eight weeks we have taken in a hundred and one more from two welfare seizures: sixty-three dogs from a single unlicensed breeding site, and thirty-eight horses and ponies from a farm where the owner had simply stopped. Neither was optional. When the local authority calls, we are the facility with the space, and now we are the facility without it.

Two hundred and forty animals is beyond anything we have run before. The immediate problems are unglamorous: hay, hard feed, veterinary treatment for animals that arrived in poor condition, and the heating oil for the hospital wing and the puppy block, which cannot go cold. Our barn holds about six weeks of forage at this population and our reserves went on the emergency vetting in the first fortnight.

What this appeal covers

Feed, bedding, heating and veterinary costs for the winter — the five months between now and the point where grazing returns and the seized animals have been assessed, treated, and either rehomed or moved to long-term foster. It is not a building appeal and there is nothing capital in it. It is the cost of keeping two hundred and forty animals alive and warm until spring.

• 101 animals taken in from two welfare seizures in eight weeks, none of them refusable.
• 38 horses and ponies now on hard feed, most needing at least three months of rehabilitation.
• 63 dogs, of which 41 need dental or orthopaedic work before they can be rehomed.
• Five months of forage, bedding, heating oil and veterinary care.

What the money buys

These are our actual costs at current prices, and forage has risen about a fifth since last winter.

• $9,800 — Forage and hard feed, five months Hay, haylage and conditioning feed for 38 equines plus the existing herd.
• $7,400 — Veterinary treatment for the seized animals Dentals, two orthopaedic cases, neutering and the treatment of four horses with severe hoof neglect.
• $5,100 — Heating oil for the hospital wing and puppy block These two buildings cannot go cold and they are the reason this bill arrives whether we can pay it or not.
• $3,600 — Bedding, shavings and straw At 240 animals we go through roughly nine tonnes of shavings a month.
• $2,400 — Two seasonal staff for the winter We cannot ask sixty volunteers to cover a doubled population through the worst months.
• $1,300 — Microchipping, licensing and platform fees Statutory costs for every animal that came in without paperwork, which was all of them.

We do not get to say no. The council rings, and either we have the space or the animals stay where they are, and everyone involved knows which of those two things is going to happen.

Who we are

Willow Creek Animal Refuge has operated on the Shropshire border for twenty-two years: ninety kennels, thirty stables, a small hospital wing, four paid staff and about sixty volunteers. Sarah Whitfield has run it for eleven of those years and does the night feeds herself more often than she should. We publish our annual accounts and our intake and outcome figures, including the animals we lose, which last year was nineteen.

Risks and challenges

The honest position is that this appeal solves a winter, not a structural problem. If a third seizure comes in before spring we will be back, and we would rather say that now than pretend otherwise. Forage prices are the main budget risk and we have quoted at current rates with a supplier who will hold the price for three months but not five. The veterinary line is our best estimate on animals that are still being assessed, and two of the orthopaedic cases could cost double what we have budgeted. Rehoming rates are the other unknown: the sixty-three dogs include a large number of adult bull breeds, which typically wait four times as long as anything else, so some of them will still be here next winter.