A TINY deer fawn will be a Christmas guest at the home of animal carer Emma Hickey.

Newbie was rescued by a kindly van driver who spotted her in the middle of the road last month. It is thought she had been hit by a car. Her mother was nowhere to be seen.

“Lots of cars were going past her and there was this lovely guy who stopped and picked her up.”

He put her under the cover of a hedge but she wouldn’t move, so eventually he put her in his van and called for help from Oak and Furrows Rescue Centre.

“She was in shock. I don’t think she had a very good chance being left out there on her own without her mother,” said Emma.

There was blood coming from her nose although she had escaped serious injury.

At just a week old, the Muntjac was unable to look after herself, so Emma moved her into a spare room at her home near Swindon and took on the task of bottle feeding her.

Newbie is doing well on a diet of chopped veg with three bottles a day containing cows milk, cod liver oil and an egg.

It is the only time she is handled and the plan is to release her back into the wild sometime after Christmas when she is ready.

Oak and Furrows is urgently trying to raise £50,000 to cover the cost of nursing almost 300 sick or vulnerable wild animals over winter, including around 125 hedgehogs.

To help them visit oandf.co.uk