In late December 2006 we received a small Pademelon joey in to care. He had been found like so many others by a passing motorist stopping to move a dead wallaby off the road. The joey was in the pouch, extremely stressed, but unharmed. The lady that found him called immediately for help, and he was brought to Wildlife Mountain. He has thrived in care, as you can see by these images.

 

 

Another Pademelon joey similar age to the first one, came in to care middle of February 2007. The lady that found him, had been out riding her horse, when she came across the little joey sitting on top of his dead mother.

The lady picked up the joey and took him home. She did not call for help, as she thought that she would raise it with her children. What better way to teach your children about native animals.

She went to a local veterinary surgery and bought native animal formula as she knew that marsupials can not tolerate ordinary milk, she also bought some teats to suit his little mouth. She knew that the joey had to be pouched, so he was placed in a pouch.

After 5 days she noticed that the joey did not seem as happy as he had earlier, he had become extremely smelly, he had diarroeah to a point where it was obviously a big problem. She had not weighed the joey when she found it, but it seemed much thinner now than before.

She finally called for help, and explained that they would no longer be able to care for the joey, although it had become very friendly with their poodle, it was time for it to go. She also mentioned that it was a very talkative joey, it called loudly for them all the time. Another small problem seemed to be that it no longer hopped as well as before. The children cried loudly when the carer collected the joey, obviously distressed by loosing their little pet.

The carer that collected the little joey was terribly upset by the state of it. It was extremely smelly, the pouch was dirty as it had constant diarroeah, it had advanced intestinal thrush, and the poor little thing did not stop calling, a sign of extreme stress.

It had been fed huge amounts of formula, so much so that its gut was flooded. It was suffering from Myopathy, very rarely seen in very young joey's,although it is common in adult wallabies.

So why did this go so horribly wrong for this family that thought they were doing all the right things?

Firstly a joey does not show its stress or fear. In the wild if an animal shows any kind of stress, fear, or injury, it knows that predators will either hear their distress, or smell their fear. ( Ever noticed flies will be buzzing around a still alive, but injured animal?)

Animals do not have facial expressions as such, so it is very hard to determine when an animal is stressed unless you know the tell tale signs to look for.

This family did not know that when a joey vocalises, it is a sign of extreme stress.

A joey of this size is not yet emerged from the pouch, it's legs were simply not strong enough to carry it, as it was being made to hop around the floor by the children.

They had bought the right formula, but did not know how much, or how often to feed it, and it ended up with diarroeah, flooding of it's gut, and dehydration as the diarroeah increased.

They did not know that joey's are made to defecate by their mothers, it does not come naturally, they will hang on till no longer able to, causing kidney problems just to name one.

Native animals do not mix with dogs, having this little joey exposed to a friendly dog, caused it so much stress that it could not cope. Add being handled by well meaning small children, and you have a complete disaster on your hands.

The joey had lost so much weight that the bones were showing through, and all this in just 5 days......

There was no hope of this joey recovering, and it was humanely euthanased.

We can only hope that with education, this sort of incident will happen less, unfortunately it happens every day all around Australia, well meaning every day people find an injured or orphaned native animal, and they want to care for it. Nothing wrong with that, BUT please become involved with a registered wildlife care organisation, learn how to do it right, and help save our native animals.

This particular little joey suffered horribly from the time it was found till it was euthanased. All due to lack of education.

I have not included any images of this joey, I think it had enough exposure in it's very short life.