I brought 2 up when I was about 12 years old (er, this is more than 30 years ago) . A local ferreter had been feretting (as you might expect from the name
), but quite early in the year, not expecting any litters - his ferret brought out a doe (dead) in milk and he managed to retrieve 2 babies which I heard about and got off him. In the absence of anything else available then, I reared them on (believe it or not) ordinary cows milk! There were no wildlife hospitals or anything and the internet hadn't even been dreamt of ! - all you could call for advice was the RSPCA who would give the stock answer - "put them outside & leave them alone" (yeah, 'cos unweaned orphaned animals with barely open eyes are going to do
really well left out in the cold alone aren't they?). They were weaned off and released at the same warren they'd come from. My main memory is waking up through the night to feed them (good practise for later life!! ) for a couple of weeks until they were fully weaned. Everyone told me they'd die etc, but I proved them wrong!
Word got about and over the years I ended up with various injured odds and sods and most memorably bringing up 2 woodpigeon squabs whose tree had been felled, the next year a baby jackdaw and so on - all went back to the wild except those beyond repair when the other option was kinder for them though harder for me.
The woodpigeons were absolute characters - something I'd never have discovered under normal circumstances.