Saturday, August 8, 2015

Wild Baby Rescue, Week 10

This week at Wild Baby Rescue, the groundhog Boomer who was here for a long time was released. I was especially proud of this moment because he was my responsibility most of the time, and I am happy to see that he's grown up and become a big healthy groundhog. Hopefully, he'll be able to find his way around in the wild and find a nice place to settle down and make a burrow. Skittles, the other groundhog that I was in charge of, is now moved to an outside cage. There, she can run around and dig whenever she wants, and it grants her much more freedom than an inside cage. She seems much happier now that she has more room to herself.

















































The baby opossums are growing up nicely as well. They are now all in larger cages, except for the smallest ones. Everyone still eats out of dishes, so there's no need to hand-feed them. Their food is a combination of yogurt, baby food meat, fruit, and vegetable, cat chow and formula. This combination of ingredients provides just the right amount of nutrients for these guys so that they can grow and stay healthy. Some of the opossums have grown big enough to be put into outside cages. This makes their feeding and maintenance much easier and prepares them for life in the wild.







 We have an abundance of baby cottontails at the facility. These rabbits are very common in this part of the country, and breed 3-4 times per year with an average kit size of 5 babies. This means that if the mother is ever killed or taken, there are a lot of babies that are orphaned. Since one female rabbit can have up to 35 babies every year, depending on population sizes and temperature, it's no surprise that we have this many baby cottontails to take care of. Nearly all of them are being hand-fed, and they should be large enough to release soon. 

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