A lovely Sunday at Hydestile Resident Animals!

If you work Monday to Friday, Sundays are usually for rest and relaxation… but not if you are Graham and Lyn Cornick! This lovely couple allowed us to spend the morning with them at Hydestile Resident Animals, their Wildlife centre near Godalming.

Graham and Lyn have been caring for wildlife for over 40 years, so we were very excited to pay them a visit to see what they get up to, and obviously we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend some time meeting their resident animals too!

We’d been lucky enough to receive some great donations which we took along, especially from the lovely people at Marriages who gave us several bags of small animal food for the little residents to munch away on!

Whilst Graham and Lyn had decided to retire around 10 years ago, things didn’t go to plan and so both are still working hard caring for the animals brought to them, as well as being a point of contact for emergency situations where no one else can help. Hydestile Resident Animals run a free advice line service, so if you find an injured animal they can usually put you in touch with someone who can support you.

The team at the centre have a very organised, professional but friendly set up and certainly don’t show any signs of slowing down. During our visit we were able to meet their residents and learn about how Graham and Lyn have built up the care facilities they have today for numerous pole cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hedgehogs, and not to mention lots and lots of birds who are recovering from injury under their care.

Graham still gives his ‘Talk on the wild side’ to schools, colleges and birthday parties and brings some of the resident animals to meet the participants. These talks are something Graham has done for over 20 years and are proving as popular as ever – the idea behind them being to encourage both children and adults to understand, respect and learn how to care for the wildlife which surrounds them.

Conservation is as important as it ever has been and protecting our wildlife is something we are never too old to get involved with.

Thanks to Graham and Lyn, and centres like them around the world, the education and facilities are available for us all to be active participants and do the best we can for preserving the wildlife that surrounds us. We can’t thank them enough for their hospitality when we visited and look forward to supporting them throughout 2019 and beyond!

Information

Hydestile reception is open between 9am and 1pm for donation drop off, however the facility is not open to the public for general viewing.

If you know of an injured or distressed animal which no one can help, please contact the Hydestile advice line on 01483 860313.