Seal and Wildlife Hospital

On arrival seal pups are usually given an antibiotic injection and a glucose based fluid by tube to help counter de-hydration. For the next few days they are kept quiet and warm but as soon as possible they are introduced to others of the same age, given access to a warm pool and encouraged to eat sprats or small herring. We have found that trying to mimic seal milk is not only difficult (it is at least 10 times as rich as the best Jersey cows) but also unnecessary given that the pups are naturally weaned within a few weeks of birth. The Harp Seal has taken this to the extreme by weaning 4 at days old!

Common seals make up about a third of the admissions in a normal year. They are usually born in June so these are the ones you are most likely to see if you visit in the summer. Most of them are young animals suffering from worms and mouth ulcerations. Their injuries can make them very difficult to look after because if the mouth is too badly damaged it then becomes impossible to get food or liquid into them without enormous distress.


Grey seal pups tend to be more robust but then they have to be: they are born in winter, the mothers only suckle them for 2-3 weeks and right from birth they have to dodge the massive bulls competing in an attempt to impress the cows. Despite the problems grey seals have become one of the great conservation success stories. 100 years ago they were down to a few hundred animals. Now there are over 200,000 and half the world's population live around our shores. In Lincolnshire they have been especially successful and only a few miles from here is the biggest breeding colony in England. 30 years ago we counted about a dozen pups; today well over a thousand are born there every year.


The hospital and new seal recuperation building have a variety of pools that allow us to provide a seal with intensive care at first but then move it on to bigger pools and more competition as they get stronger. To get their share of fish they quickly learn to become faster in the water and are able to build up their muscles. This is essential training if they are to be fit enough for a life in the wild. We try and provide a range of foods including flat fish (which are the most important food for grey seals on the Lincolnshire coast), herring, sand eels, mackerel and sprats.

Release. On arrival the smallest seals may weigh less than 20lbs and it normally takes several months of being fed about 6lbs of fish a day to reach the release weight of at least 80lbs. No wonder our fish bill is about £1,000 a week! Ideally we wait for a calm sea just before low tide and carefully crate up two seals that have grown up together (after one such release, a pair were seen still together 2 weeks later). Then it is a short drive to a quiet beach on a national nature reserve not far from the breeding colony. The Sea Mammal Research Unit supplies us with tags so that lessons can be learned if they are spotted again. Records have come back of sightings years after release from Yorkshire, Norfolk and even Calais.