Oaken Acres Wildlife Center

Oaken Acres Wildlife Center Welcome to Oaken Acres Wildlife Center. Founded in 1984 by Kathy Stelford. Oaken Acres accepts injured and orphaned wildlife, mostly from DeKalb County.
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EVERY LIFE MATTERS! is our slogan:) Saving wild lives through rehabilitation, education and conservation. Oaken Acres is one of the only wildlife rehabilitation centers that accepts all species regardless of age. In 2020, we admitted over 1,300 orphaned or injured wild patients making us one of the largest wildlife centers in Illinois. We live by our motto of EVERY LIFE MATTERS!

Of course one of newest patients is ANOTHER Virginia opossum!It seems like we're getting one a day due to being hit by a...
11/06/2025

Of course one of newest patients is ANOTHER Virginia opossum!
It seems like we're getting one a day due to being hit by a car - HBC. We noticed something that didin't look quite right in his eyes - a bluish gray almost disc-like area. So I sent a close up photo of the eyes to Dr. Sarah at DuPage Wildlife, formerly Willowbrook. She said as long as I was making the trip there, she'd do a blood test to check for lead poisoning. I felt pretty sure that lead poisoning wouldn't be an issue since he was in such good, overall condition. Great weight and beautiful fur. Well, shows you how appearance can be deceiving. His lead levels were TOO HIGH for the machine to read and he is blind. No surprise he was hit by a car. But how had he been managing so well all this time? It's possible that his blindness could be caused by the high levels of lead in his bloodstream. Dr. Sarah helped me fill out a prescription online for one of the medications we need to treat the lead poisoning. We've already got another drug to begin treatment but the two used together produce better results. There's no guarantee this will cure the blindness but it's worth a try. He'll be going back to the vet in three weeks for a check up:)

11/04/2025

Back in mid-August, Olivia rescued this adult male red-tailed hawk. Judging from where he was found, he had been hit by a car and suffered a fractured femur. He was in very good shape otherwise so within a couple of days, he had surgery at DuPage Wildlife Conservation courtesy of Dr. Sarah Reich. A stainless steel pin was placed in the femur to ensure it healed in the correct position. And it did!

With adult birds of prey, it's especially important to return them to their home territory. There is probably a mate awaiting the return of its partner, maybe even still needing help with the babies they hatched that year. So off I went with the hawk to the exact location where he was rescued in McHenry County. Now, most of you who have followed us for awhile know that my videos are legendary for their, well, poor quality. This one is no different but at least you can see the redtail flying over the field. Probably a field that he has hunted prior to his accident. It was a beautiful day for just about anything. There's nothing that compares to watching a bird that could have had a hopeless future flying free again!

Watch this space tomorrow morning."Oh no, Kathy took a video. We all know what that means," said the hawk!
11/03/2025

Watch this space tomorrow morning.
"Oh no, Kathy took a video. We all know what that means," said the hawk!

So this poor opossum is what Dr. Diemer was working on at Prairie View Animal Hospital Friday afternoon. Yet another HBC...
11/03/2025

So this poor opossum is what Dr. Diemer was working on at Prairie View Animal Hospital Friday afternoon. Yet another HBC - hit by car - victim. This time, Christina's stepdaughter was on her way to the daycare provider and saw an opossum struggling to get out of the road. She called her Mom knowing sh would come out to rescue the poor guy. He had made it to the side of the road and just curled up there.
The icky photos are from road rash on his face (might have lost vision in the one) and his tail was basically shredded and unsalvageable:( So the photo of him sleeping may look cropped but he no longer has a tail! He loves his soft, plush bed with a heating pad and he has started eating. YAY!
He's one lucky young opossum that someone saw him struggling, someone else took the time to rescue him, and our friends at Prairie View AH had time to fit him into their schedule:)

What is Dr. Diemer of Prairie View Animal Hospital working on?Watch this space tomorrow morning.
11/03/2025

What is Dr. Diemer of Prairie View Animal Hospital working on?
Watch this space tomorrow morning.

These four baby mice are inseparable. They do EVERYTHING together!We've had them for 12 days now after a dog attacked an...
11/02/2025

These four baby mice are inseparable. They do EVERYTHING together!
We've had them for 12 days now after a dog attacked and killed their mom. Their eyes were still closed and we don't usually expect this kind of success with such young white-footed mice but, as you can see, all four are doing great. I found them like this last night at midnight when I went out to the center to feed yet another eyes-closed baby mouse that arrived just as these four were weaned, of course. Enough already mice mommas - stop with the babies!!!

The other day, I posted that I thought a screech owl had taken up residence down by y river under the porch of Mark's ho...
11/01/2025

The other day, I posted that I thought a screech owl had taken up residence down by y river under the porch of Mark's homemade cabin. Well, look what showed up yesterday. Rick and Cheryl from Ogle County offered us not one but two handmade screech owl nestboxes! How cool is that. THANKS so much for such an appreciated gift:)

We're always looking for people to build squirrel nestboxes for us (Rick offered to do that too) because when we release our hundreds of orphans that we raise each year, we give them their nestbox to live in so they have a familiar shelter to live in until they decide to leave on their own. Here's a link to our website with the plans for building squirrel boxes if anyone would like to help.
https://www.oakenacres.org/_files/ugd/4441aa_182b0e3348fc49c182f1761bbe2b6ecd.pdf

Three years ago today ---WALLY moves into her winter den!It's been hard not having our Princess Wallina around these pas...
10/31/2025

Three years ago today ---WALLY moves into her winter den!
It's been hard not having our Princess Wallina around these past few months. We fell in love with her from the day she arrived - weak, her tiny body with 6 puncture wounds filled with maggots, and a dislocated hind leg. And she was only 2-3 weeks old, weighing 3 pounds. She overcame all of her injuries and the surgical repair of her hind leg was successful. This is her at about 6 months old, weighing 35 pounds and ready for bed with her Squishmallow. Her "den" that winter was our old center that Mark had transformed into WALLY World with a large stock tank, ramp, and plenty of space for her tree branched and all of her toys. I know that so many of you prayed for her and followed her story for almost two years on WALLY WEDNESDAYs on FB. We are hoping that since being released on a private pond at 2 years old back in April and then moving next door to a quarry lake with other beavers, that she is all ready for winter with her new family and in a real beaver den. You were/are so loved and, yes, still missed:)

What am I looking at? Owl pellets. Probably from one of the screech owls we raised and released this summer. I've been w...
10/30/2025

What am I looking at? Owl pellets. Probably from one of the screech owls we raised and released this summer. I've been walking down at the river pretty regularly and we have this cabin down there that Mark built all out of recycled wood. There's a small porch with some little birdhouses mounted on the front. I believe that a screech owl has been sitting on one of them at night and regurgitating its pellets each night onto the porch floor. Now, I need to find a screech owl nestbox for it and hope it sticks around and starts a family.

And yet another HBC opossum:(Now opossums aren't the smartest animal out there, but they sure get the short end of the s...
10/29/2025

And yet another HBC opossum:(
Now opossums aren't the smartest animal out there, but they sure get the short end of the stick when it comes to accidents. Part of it might be from their habit of "playing 'possum" aka, playing dead. This is another young one, a little boy. There's something else that opossums are prone to - lead poisoning. I'll explain more in another post about how we're going to try to get a grant to get a lead testing machine so we can determine if they need treatment but, for now, just keep this little boy in your thoughts.

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12140 Aldrich Road
Sycamore, IL
60178

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