Abandoned

The rescue call came from a farmer, he had come out in the morning to find a small joey sitting under his tractor. He explained that in all the years he had been on the farm he had never seen a wallaby close by.

So one has to wonder how did this little Swamp wallaby arrive there.

At the time Australia was in the grip of a drought, some would say the worst drought Eastern Australia has seen in many years.

In a drought situation many native animals have to travel far to find food and water, they go through unfamiliar territory ,and are easily frightened.This particular joey was at an age where it would probably had been at foot some of the time, therefore traveling along beside the mother.

The farm where she was found had some lovely green grass, obviously being well tended for the cattle, so what a pleasure it must have been for the wallaby and her joey to have stumbled across such a smorgasboard.How they became separated I do not know, but something must have frightened the mother, as the joey certainly would have tried to keep up with her speed, but not able to, she became lost.

When I picked her up, she was very dehydrated, and underweight. I imagine she had tried to feed herself, but being so young she needed the milk from her mother to survive.

It did not take too long for this little female to recover from her ordeal, she was kept inside for a few days to get used to being fed, and being handled.One thing ( amongst many ) I find fascinating with these animals, when a new one arrives in the pen, the other wallaby joey's in care come one by one, like they are introducing themselves, they stick their nose in the pouch and greet the new arrival, it is such a gentle act, but has an amazing effect, almost immediately after, the new one starts to look out, I am sure they know they are amongst friends. Another reason for bringing them up in groups.

She spent close to 5 months in the nursery pen, and was then taken to our pre release pen where she spent another almost 3 months gaining the skills needed to make her life in the wild. She was released with her adopted family group after 8 months in care.