Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare has been working tirelessly to improve the lives of animals for over 70 years.
We are a charity that aims to give animals a better life through rehoming, rehabilitation and sanctuary, and give people the support and knowledge they need to treat animals with care and respect.
In 2023/2024, we rehomed 563 animals and assisted 1835 in total. Uniquely, we care for a huge range of animals from horses, ponies and donkeys to alpacas, dogs and cats. Our experience and expertise enable us to deliver an exceptional quality of care for the animals most of whom find new homes. Raystede also provides life-long sanctuary for those animals that cannot be rehomed.
Thanks to a generous grant by the Elise Pilkington Charitable Trust, we have been able to purchase a new all-terrain utility vehicle for our equine team to help care for our horses, ponies and donkeys plus other livestock across approximately 20 acres of our 43-acre site.
The equine team visit the 19 equines in their care multiple times a day to feed them, clean out their stables, “poo pick”, provide medical treatment and carry out basic maintenance tasks such as putting up temporary fencing, laying out mud mats and enrichment items and moving heavy items such as straw and hay bales as well as grooming and medical equipment around the site.
Our existing utility vehicle was breaking down with increasing regularity. Every time this happened things become very difficult for our staff and volunteers as their workload increased while their speed at which they could work naturally decreased thereby reducing the time they could spend directly working with our animals.
Alice Campion, Equine Manager at Raystede said: “We are delighted that the grant from the Elise Pilkington Charitable Trust has enabled us to purchase a new utility vehicle. It will make a real difference to how we can support the animals in our care.
“One to one work is very important as our equines are of mixed ages and states of health. Recent multiple breakdowns of our previous vehicle meant a reduction in 1:1 time with our animals, many of whom have a greater need for this kind of support.
“The new vehicle greatly reduces the amount of time our team spend on hard, physical labour allowing them to focus more on attending to individual equines’ needs such as the provision of rehabilitation, training and enrichment activities thus improving welfare standards overall.”