Swinton Pet Cremations – Whatever Animal You Have Lost

People telephone here and start by apologising for the animal being unusual, which is never necessary and happens several times a week. Heavenly Pastures provides pet cremations for households throughout Swinton. Our position deserves plain statement rather than guesswork. No premises of ours exist in the town and Swinton holds no crematorium. Every cremation takes place at a single site, Burscough near Ormskirk, which means travelling to reach you.

Not Only Cats and Dogs

A great many households keep something other than the obvious, and the assumption that a cremation service is really only set up for cats and dogs puts people off ringing at all. It is worth saying plainly that it is not so.

Reptiles

Bearded dragons, corn snakes, leopard geckos and tortoises all live in a good number of houses around here, and a tortoise in particular may have been in a family for forty years and outlived the person who bought it. These animals are cared for exactly as any other. Reptile owners frequently assume theirs will be regarded as less of a loss, and usually that is because somebody has already told them so, often within a day of it happening. Nobody says it here, and a tortoise that has outlasted two generations of a family is treated with the seriousness that fact deserves.

Birds

A parrot can share a household for thirty or forty years and is frequently grieved like a member of the family, which surprises nobody who has actually kept one. Budgerigars, cockatiels and finches are just as often the animal somebody spoke to every morning. Ashes can be returned from a bird, which a great many people do not realise and are visibly relieved to hear. Feathers can generally be kept as well if that would mean something.

Ferrets, Rodents and the Rest

Ferrets, rats, degus, chinchillas, guinea pigs, hamsters and mice are all looked after here without anybody raising an eyebrow. Rats in particular tend to be intensely attached to their households, live only two or three years, and are grieved with an intensity that surprises people who have never kept one. If your animal is something not on this list, ring and ask rather than assuming the answer is no, because it very seldom is. Households have telephoned about axolotls, stick insects and a pygmy goat, and nobody at this end has ever been thrown by a question.

Ashes From Something Very Small

Whether anything can come back at all is what people want to know first, and it can. The process works the same way for a hamster as for a labrador. There is less of it, naturally, but it is theirs and nobody else’s. Families are sometimes braced to be told that an individual cremation is not offered below a certain size, and that has never been the case here. Our small pets individual cremation service page goes through this in more detail, including what the container options are.

The Two Services

The choice is the same whatever the animal. Under an individual cremation service yours is the only creature involved at any stage, and that is the reason ashes can be handed back at the end. Under a communal cremation service a number are cremated together and nothing goes back to any household. Both are done by the same few people to a single standard, and only one leaves you anything to bring home.

Bringing a Small Animal to Us

Where the animal is easily carried, a fair number of households prefer to drive over rather than wait in, and it often feels more fitting. Ring ahead where you can so somebody is expecting you. It is a straightforward run out and you will be met at the door rather than directed toward a waiting area. There is a chapel of rest if you would like a few minutes when you arrive.

Collection Around Swinton

Where you would rather we came, that is the ordinary arrangement. Choose whichever hour suits your household. Nothing needs preparing and no animal should be moved by anybody at your end, whatever its size. An animal that died under veterinary care is picked up from the practice, so nobody has to go back for them.

What It Costs

Everything sits openly on the pet cremation price list rather than being quoted household by household, so the position is clear before you speak to anybody. Charges follow weight bands, which works considerably in favour of anybody with a small animal, since the chamber is occupied for a fraction of the time a large dog would need. What the journey costs is worked separately from how far the run out of Burscough is, and appears on the areas we cover page.

Beyond the Weekday Hours

Monday to Friday holds our normal times, with anything else arranged separately at additional cost. An animal dying in the evening, where first light will do, makes that the less expensive route with nothing sacrificed. Somewhere cool and quiet until then covers it, and with very small animals in particular nothing at all is affected by waiting.

Ring and Ask

Call 01704 776976 and describe whatever you have lost, in whatever terms come naturally. Nothing you say will strike anybody here as odd, and no animal is too unusual to be worth asking about. Where writing suits you better, our contact form comes to the same few people.