Animal shelter in Cornwall at capacity after almost 150 animals found from one-bed home
ITV West Country's Charlotte Gay speaks to staff at the shelter
An animal shelter in Cornwall has been inundated with guinea pigs and rabbits after 143 animals were rescued from one home.
Maria's Animal Shelter in Truro received a call to carry out a rescue, expecting only a few animals.
Maria Mulkeen, who runs the centre, went to the callout and realised 143 animals were being kept in the one-bedroom property.
"It was a little bit shocking at first. We had to take every animal we could.," she told ITV News.
"And then my thoughts were, 'where are we going to put them all here?'"
Maria said the animals were living in terrible conditions, adding: "They didn’t have any food, or water, or hay".
“I’ve never been into something like that before," she added.
"When we picked them up we thought 'where are they all going to go?'
"We have a two and a half acre site, but that was way past our capacity."
In total 61 guinea pigs and rabbits were taken back to Maria's Animal Shelter. The others went to different rescue centres.
Maria and the team made makeshifts pens for the animals and grouped males and females together.
Some of the animals are now in foster care, but about 10 of the guinea pigs and rabbits died.
"Some of them are still unwell at the moment," she added.
"There's quite a few that had chest infections, most of them were very thin, their teeth were quite bad. But as soon as they got here, we started giving them lots of vitamin C, lots of peppers to eat and things to boost them up a bit."
Maria has been running the shelter specialising in guinea pigs and rabbits since 2000 and helps between 200 and 250 animals a year.
She said "luckily" incidents like this don't happen very often.
The shelter are oversubscribed, with more than 100 animals waiting to come in. It costs Maria £100,000 a year to run the shelter, so funding is essential. Last year, the charity found itself £11,000 out of pocket.
She said lots of people buy guinea pigs and rabbits thinking they are a low maintenance animal.
"The animals we’ve got are the most neglected because they’re put in a hutch at the bottom of the garden or they’re thrown out and people think they can survive in the wild, but they can’t," she said.
"People buy these animals not realising that they need companionship."
The shelter tries to educate people so their animals are happy going into new homes.
"We make sure animals are healthy before putting them up for adoption and make sure people understand the requirements for looking after them properly."