Newquay’s Prickles and Paws takes in 728 hedgehogs and counting

Most rescues measure a good year in the hundreds. Prickles and Paws has already passed 728 admissions in 2026, and it is only the start of August. July alone brought 253 hedgehogs through the door, the busiest single month in the charity’s history, and the team near Newquay is still bracing for more.

A record month, and then another

The numbers from July read like a rescue running flat out. There were 253 admissions across the month, a record, and 104 hedgehogs released back to the wild, also a record. At its fullest the site was caring for 151 patients at once.

Put next to last year, the gap is stark. The charity says it is running six weeks ahead of where it stood at the same point in 2025, and admissions are still climbing rather than easing off. Where the 2025 curve was only beginning to lift by midsummer, the 2026 line has already shot past it.

Who is coming in, and why

The charity breaks its intake down by age. This year 423 were adults and 84 were juveniles. Then come the hoglets, the babies most vulnerable to a spell without a mother, with 182 aged over two weeks and 38 under two weeks old.

The reasons they arrive are a catalogue of everything that can go wrong for a hedgehog. The single biggest is being found out in the daytime, a classic sign that something is wrong for a nocturnal animal, which accounted for 263 admissions. Another 174 came in orphaned. Road traffic accidents, injury and trauma brought in 122, entrapment and entanglement 76, dog attacks and disturbance 37, and a further 48 for other reasons. Five arrived through vets or the RSPCA with no history provided, and two had been poisoned or burned by caustic substances.

Why the new Hogspital matters

The charity is blunt about what made this year possible. It could not have coped at its old site. The move to its purpose-built Hogspital, on the Carnanton estate near Newquay, has changed what the small team can take on, and it needed to.

Demand is still outpacing capacity. To keep up with the influx of tiny hoglets the rescue has recently bought four more incubators, and the next job on the list is building more isolation hutches so poorly patients can be treated without risk to the rest. Prickles and Paws receives no government funding and depends entirely on public support.

How to help

The charity has spelled out what donations buy. Three pounds covers a three-day course of pain relief and anti-inflammatories for an injured hedgehog. Fifteen pounds pays for the medication and treatment of a hedgehog with ringworm. There is a one-off option, a weekly one, and a monthly scheme called Prickle Planet, all on the Prickles and Paws donation page.

In its own words, every donation, share and kind word makes a difference. You can follow the rescue’s day-to-day work on its Facebook page.