Its the time of the year when daylight hours are short and people are traveling to and from work in the dark while wallabies, kangaroos and other wildlife are still out foraging.
Sadly little Rednecked Wallabies are 4 of the 11 that have come into care in the last month within a radius of 50 klm, the mothers were unfortunately all killed by the impact of vehicle strike.
Currently these little joeys are kept warm and cosy being and feed every three hours during the day and night, the older ones are feed four hourly so it’s a busy time here at the wildlife centre. It takes these little ones time to get used to the bottle and a larger volume intake as when they are in mums pouch the suckle on the teat a drop at a time. Along with the feeding, there is the toileting – cleaning little bottoms, and all the washing as you would expects soiled pouches, face washers and towels…
These little joeys will stay incare for atleast another 18 months to 2.5 years, over which times the will learn to get themselves in and out of pouches, eat grasses and forage before being introduced into little mobs (groups). Usually the mob will be a minimum of 5 wallabies with 3 female and 2 males.
Each mob is moved from the small enclosures to the big fenced area where they must learn to find the food and water source, which is moved regularly to encourage normal foraging behaviour. All the while though this process communication with the wallabies becomes infrequent reducing human intervention. Fortunately we are located in rural forested area where we can provide for just open the gate a let them move on.