‘Small fluffies’ and exotic animals get dedicated home at DSPCA after big increase in surrenders

The DSPCA has announced the opening of a new Small Animal and Exotics House at its shelter in Rathfarnham, Dublin.

The area will be open to the public from Tuesday July 2, and will act as “a viewing place for the public to come and see animals the likes of rabbits, guinea pigs, ferrets, and some of the other exotics we have there at the moment,” said Gillian Bird, spokesperson for the DSPCA.

Ms Bird explained that other animals included under the small animals and exotics category would be birds, snakes, and all forms of reptiles that the DSPCA would acquire either through surrenders or rescues.

The new house was constructed in response to the fact that many of the small or exotic animals weren’t on display in the same way dogs and cats were. “People would come in and they wouldn't necessarily know that we had available; they'd have to make a special arrangement to see what we even had. So this is now a section, a room, where people can actually come in and have a look at the animals and chat to the staff if they're interested in adopting,” Ms Bird explained.

The organisation says that adoptions of these animals have increased by 55.5pc in last 12 months alone. Ms Bird explained that this is because there has been an increase in surrenders or rescues of these types of animals, and that the DSPCA has therefore “been pushing a huge amount of the animals on our social media pages”.

“A lot of people want to obviously adopt rabbits and small fluffies, but they think they automatically have to go to pet shops, and they don't realise that a lot of the rescue centres around the country also have them as well,” Ms Bird explained.

While Ms Bird said the process for adopting a small or exotic animal is similar to that of adopting a dog or a cat, she also noted that certain species came with specific sets of needs.

“The reason that a huge amount of small animals are actually surrendered is the fact that people often don't understand the breeding of them. So, somebody might have had a guinea pig and it had babies. But they might not understand that young male guinea pigs can actually reproduce within about 4 or 5 weeks of age, and they can actually breed with their mother,” Ms Bird said.

This can often lead to people becoming overwhelmed, and since small animals have to be kept with their mothers for up to four weeks, people will often surrender entire litters at once.

Ms Bird said other common issues that can occur with these animals is that they've been out in the wild.

The small animals category also includes birds, which often come in with eye infections, or which have begun to pluck their feathers out of stress. Ms Bird noted that all the relevant care for such conditions is “all done on site, and the new pet owners will be filled in in full details of what the story is and what the background of the animal is before adoption”.

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