Raising Millie, a baby wallaby



Just three weeks ago when I was walking around our boundary fence I notices a dead wallaby, not an uncommon sight around here as there are a lot of Wallabies and Kangaroos. I am not averse to shooting kangaroos as they are in plague proportions but I do think if you shoot them you should use them. We or Peter, shoot one from time to time that we eat. We don't shoot the wallabies though. Anyway I digress, something made me look more closely at the dead wallaby and I noticed there was a Joey in her pouch. I pulled it out and created a dilemma for myself, having found her I needed to either look after her or put her out of her misery. Unable to do the latter I carried her home. She looked quite healthy but small, she had all her hair. Peter agreed we should try and raise her and then release her when she was independent so the raising of Millie began. I was fortunate that when I went to the vet to buy some lactose free milk for her that there was a visiting vet there who knew a lot about marsupials and I also found some excellent material on the net. At first she was very hard to feed and we battled to get her to drink tiny amounts of milk, however right from the start she had no diarrhoea, which is what kills them, and was weeing and pooing appropriately. I started off feeding her five times a day and then remembered I was going to be away so she had to have a schedule that Peter could manage while I was in Sydney. so she gets three feeds a day.
I made her a pouch out of a bag lined with old jumpers and we put old T shirts in as liners that can be changed if they get soiled. She lives in the house at night and out in the garden in my old chook tractor of a day.
She has done very well, she is drinking about 180 mls a day now, eating grass and enjoying hopping around the garden when the dogs are not about. She is the cutest thing. So here I am with the unexpected delight or raising a Wallaby. 







Comments

Anonymous said…
How lucky he was that you found him:) Looks so cute;)
September 20, 2011 at 1:17 PM
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