Winter Update

Which way do we go Gibbsy?

Leaving town to come to our place

These two pictures are of the two  Eastern Grey boys that suffered from coccidiosis.





Well what a wet and miserable time we've been having here on the east coast.
Since the December post two more little swamp wallabies joined our little group they are Chloe and Tim.  Both named by their carer before they came to live with us. Chloe is a friendy little soul who loves to mix in but Timothy is a nervous chap who sneaks up on his food so it won't run away.  That looks really silly as it's a bowl of Wamberoo milk. They don't like drinking out of bottles!!
D won't let these little ones in with the older Swampy's as Samson, (from down at the railway line), is a bit bossy and loves to finish his food first and try to gobble everyone else's macropod pellets.
Chloe and Timmy are in the nursery pen and the others in the transit pen with the gate to the very large (100metre) fenceline pen open to them readying them for release.  It has shadecloth around the base to approx a metre for a privacy barrier for the bubbies - BUT we biggies outside can hop up and look over to inspect them.  Tommy the red-necked wallaby is getting quite big now but he still jumps up and down on the spot so he can get a look - he's just like a little kid who'd be yelling "let me see""let me see". D laughs at him as he looks very funny.
It has been so wet and nasty with fungi growing everywhere, that the little swampies all came down with a whole heap of scabies like mites on their faces and ears, sooo... off to the vet for info and a short two day course of ivermectin to clear them up.  Mostly worked fine, but puddles had to have two courses as did Jacqui.  The first four were all released at 8.5 kgs and hopped away and came back visiting a few times, but now we never see them.  They're not like kangas we like to stay around and make a base mob here.  Wallabies, particularly the Swamp species are very solitary.
After a couple of months (in May) with just Chloe and Timmy, we got two beautiful 5kg Eastern grey boys who came to live.  Sadly these boys arrived at a time when it was very stormy weather and they were very skittish and a bit too old, they should have been here earlier (around 3 kgs).  It made for a very stressful time and over the course of three days they both contracted the ghastly coccidiosis and despite intensive nursing from D and G they both died.  This is a disease which lives in the gut of some Australian animals, causes great pain and flares up in times of stress.  One of its nasty effects is to cause the animal to dehydrate.
Keep reading our blog, more soon.