More new babies

Its coming up to Xmas now and the weather is still scary and stormy - although its the lunar eclips around midnight.  That's a new experience for us, the young joeys.  D has just released little Ali our newest red necked wallaby, who now weighs in at 7kg.  We now have no joeys in care. We spend all our days lazing about the house, on the deck or grazing on the grass. D hopes well move away soon, as we bring a good supply of mozzies and the bitey march flies, great big horsefly looking creatures.
Next weekend three more joeys will be arriving from our Macropod co-ordinator.  They are Eastern Greys and there are two little boys Mate and Bro and Mindy the smallest is a girl.  It will be good to have more for the mob.
We had a visit from Chloe our last released Swamp Wallaby, she looked fat and well groomed and healthy.

New residents

Yarra at 3.5 kgs.  She's much bigger now and growing fast.

This is just a quick post - we have three new residents with two more coming.  An eastern grey female joey, that'll be good, we need more for our mob.  Her name is Yarra and she's been here in the nursery pen a few weeks now and weighs in at 5kg.  Here's for baby photo.
We also have a new Red-necked wallaby called Gabi, shes very happy and hoppy.
Our newest is Abi and he's another swamp wallaby.  He's been in the wars and had a collision with the shadecloth and broke is toe nail on his left foot so he's been getting tlc for a while and dressings and stuff. He ripped it off but its repairing nicely now the rain and fungi are gone and the weather is chillier, drier and sunny.

More Update

Last Monday, D and G went on a rescue to release a female red-necked wallaby from pool fencing she had been caught up in having been chased by 2 dogs.  This 25kg - 30kg animal had managed at full pace to jam her upper body to the waist between two steel bars about 15cm (or 6in in old measurements) once her hips hit the bars she was well stuck.  Luckily the dogs lost interest and the owner had managed to call them off.  It took about 1.5 hours to free her as D had to come and help hold her, G was there on his own.  The steel was exceptionally strong and they didn't want to risk injuring her or terrifying her with an angle grinder, so eventually used a steel crowbar to prise back the uprights.  Unfortunately during this time the animal had been bleeding from the nose and mouth and it was a very worrying situation. They kept her covered with an old rescue blanket and once freed, alerted the vets and dashed into the surgery.  Shae (the vet) checked her out and with relief discovered no broken bones, therefore no pierced lung.  Most bleeding was superficial, but she upper lung contusions(Bruises).  It was decided to give a long acting antibiotic shot and some pain relief, and bring her out here to our place.  It was risky as she was so big and only lightly sedated.
She tolerated being under car for the week in the big pen, and in the quiet of this place, with good tucker and little or no stress, D opened the gate this morning at first light and after an hour or two she hopped away into the bush. It was decided not to take her back to her old place as it is now heavily urbanised, with lots of dogs and a new highway being built within half a kilometre.
A great result all round so she was named Naiooka and will fit in well with the wild wallabies around here.

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.

Our Mob update

Am I a Parma?? or a swampie?

Tamba with honey eater

Well they got home a few weeks ago and all seems to have settled back to near normality.  The marsh flies are driving us all crazy as they bite our tails, the mozzies are fierce as we have been having torrents of rain.  The cicadas are all hatching and addong to the cacophany, and all the birds are nesting.  The black chinned honeyeaters are stealing fur from Tamba to line their nests.
Little Opal our eastern grey cousin has left and D is concerned that she may have met with a nasty fate, OR she may have gone hopping away with Klim and Clyde who are now big boys and do big boy (teenagers) stuff, such as brawl and chase girls.
It wasn't too long after D nd G arrived home that they took on the care of three very cute little Swamp Wallaby joeys whose mothers had been killed.  One comes from just down the road near the railway line, his Mum was hit by a train, so he was lucky to survive.  Another little female comes from the swamps of Beranghi Co-op land and other is from parts unknown.  He is a little spooky character very nervous.  All have settled in well and have put on weight.  They like to all sleep together in the same pouch.   Shortly afterwards, another little joey arrived to join the 3 already here and she comes from the Crescent Hd area.  Some think she's a Parma, maybe but daily she is growing more and more like a Swampie.  She has settled in and now enjoys snoozing with the others in the pouch, however she has been relegated to the bottom and everyone seems to pile on top of her. She was orphaned as a result of road crash.

We love to share

 Our little mob now consists of me Tidda, Tamba and little Tom our red-necked wallaby friend.  Soon the swampies will be released - that is when our little Parma/Swampy friend is big enough - probably some time after the xmas holidays.

Varkala - Trivandrum - KL then Home

Well, at last, they've decided to come home. Here's the last report - perhaps.
Firstly D apologises for the poor sizing of the photos, but she only has a very primitive freebie photoeditor of the eeepc.  She will fix the others when the hotel server is up and running again.
The weather there has mostly been wet and windy with the odd fine and glorious day.  They have found an excellent tailor and are having a few bits of clothing made all in either silk or linen., at amazingly good rates.  Even G is buying some clothes!!!!!
D likes to swim in every ocean in the world, so she had planned today to have a dip in the Arabian sea.  Too bad the weather deteriorated and the monsoon has churned the waves to a fairly dangerous level, sooooo... its only been a paddle.  Anyway it may fine up tomorrow.

Fort Cochi