Saturday, June 27, 2015

Wild Baby Rescue, Week 4

This week at Wild Baby Rescue, more and more animals continue to find their way into our facility. Baby skunks, rabbits, fawns and bats all came to us this week. Although we have many animals to take care of, we are excited to get new animals in and help them each week.

One of the things that was most momentous about this week is that we are starting to enrich our baby foxes in the art of jumping for their food. This is an essential skill that they must have in the wild; they must be able to catch birds. Therefore, it is our job to teach them how to catch and eat food that is not easy to obtain. The process of learning how to catch food in this way is long and hard for foxes. In order to simulate a bird, we placed some raw meat in a paper bag, and suspended it from the wall of the enclosure. This is to get the foxes used to the idea of catching and eating food that isn't presented to them in a bowl. The foxes are definitely curious as to what the bag is, and they even take a couple bites at it. Eventually, we will hang the bag from the ceiling of the enclosure and allow them to jump for their food. Hopefully, they will take nicely to the enrichment and will learn quickly.

Here's a link to a video that shows the enrichment of the foxes: https://www.facebook.com/henry.symanski/videos/10205460290443961/

Other than the foxes, we also were able to clean up another enclosure for one of our baby groundhogs to go outside. He's not very friendly, but having him outside is a good step towards releasing him into the wild.

More to come in the following weeks!

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