How to Keep Animals Safe in the Garden

**This is a partnered guest post 

Taking on a new animal is big responsibility.  It may always seem like a good idea to get a couple of furry friends for the home, but not everyone considers how to properly care for creatures before taking them on.  Animals are complex and so there is certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to looking after them, but there are some sure-fire ways of keeping them safe in the garden.

It is not just the elements that could affect the health of your little friends, something as simple as the type of herbicides you use in the garden could be detrimental to your pet’s health, so make sure you are aware of all the dangers.

Take Precautions Against the Cold

I imagine that, like me, you thought all of the coldest weather had gone away and everything would slowly but surely get warmer.  How wrong we were!  With sub-zero temperatures still gripping the nation, it is imperative that you take steps to keep your little pets as comfortable as possible.

When it gets colder it’s a good idea to put some extra hay and bedding into the hutches of your guinea pigs so they have something to really snuggle up into.  Placing a piece of carpet over the hutch can help to add extra insulation to it, but you must make sure that air can still get in for the poor little creatures.  If it gets too cold it would be a good idea to make use of garden sheds as they can help provide much-needed-warmth.

Garden Sheds Can Come in Handy During the Summer Too

Garden sheds help provide a great deal of options for people with pets that need to stay in hutches and other similar housing.  You assume that they can only come in handy during the winter as a place out of the icy cold wind and snow, but it can also be useful during the spring and summer.

This is traditionally when you will need to be placing pesticides into your garden to ensure that your fruit and vegetables are protected against snails and other critters that love to ruin crops.  However, much of these are dangerous for pets to ingest so you need somewhere they can go while you are distributing the pesticide.  Runs and netting can also help with this, provided you are only spraying on to the plants where your pets won’t be going at any point.

Pick Your Choice of Flowers Wisely

Now it may not come into your thinking, but let me tell you that the types of plant and flower you have in the garden is very important if you have pets that will be dwelling outside for long periods.  While choosing the prettiest of every flower might seem like a good idea, certain seeds ingested by animals can be fatal.

There isn’t an exhaustive list, but there are some that you definitely need to be ignoring for the sake of your animals.  For instance, all parts of the laburnum are poisonous and the seeds are particularly dangerous for animals, so avoid them no matter how delightful the yellow blooms look.

Philodendron is also very toxic for animals, as even contact with the eyes and mouth can cause excessive salivation and severe irritation.