After a rocky start to life, the Australian Reptile Park’s newest little addition, Matilda the yellow-footed rock wallaby joey, has grown in leaps and bounds over the past month.
Matilda is currently being hand-raised under the devoted care of Keeper Seleena de Gelder, ensuring her healthy growth and that she surpasses every milestone she would have achieved if raised naturally in her mother’s pouch.
Early last month, keepers came to Matilda’s aid after a health check of the yellow-footed rock wallaby mob revealed that Kelly, one of the females, was pawing at her pouch.
Knowing that she was carrying a beautiful young female joey, the team was quick to undergo a check and discovered that her pouch had prolapsed, meaning that she could no longer carry her little joey.
Mammals Keeper de Gelder has taken on the tiring, yet extremely rewarding, task of being a surrogate “mum” to the little joey.
Undertaking the role of carer for a newborn marsupial involves a lot of work, including feeds every two to four hours.
“Despite the lack of sleep caring for a newborn, it’s great to see that she’s progressing along steadily, and that I’m slowly getting my sleep back which is a bonus,” she said.
To check the joey’s progress over the past few weeks, the team weighed Matilda, who has increased from just 500g to 845g – an encouraging indicator of her development.
But Matilda has picked up a habit of licking and suckling her pouch, which can lead to complications over time.
The Mammals team came up with a perfect solution: using a kids sock to create a makeshift jumper which fits her little body.
This will help break that habit, but also keep her warm.
For the first two weeks, the little wallaby was also nameless.
In honour of de Gelder’s favourite soccer team, the newest resident has been named after the Matildas, who will be playing in the FIFA Women’s World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand in July.
“Like most rock wallabies, she has really powerful kicking legs so it was only fitting to name her after such a great team,” de Gelder said.
Over the next four to five months, Matilda will remain in de Gelder’s care until she’s big and strong enough to be reunited with her mum and the rest of the mob.
Visitors will eventually be able to see Matilda every day in the Yellow-Footed Rock Wallaby display at the Park.
The rescued joey is a part of the Park’s vital conservation breeding project to help save the threatened species.
Yellow-footed rock-wallabies were once found throughout NSW, Queensland and South Australia.
However, they have now disappeared from NSW and Queensland with their numbers in the wild estimated at being as little as 5,000.
Their decline is attributed to intense hunting in the 1800s and early 1900s for their pelts and in recent times, the introduction of feral pests such at the fox and cat.
Source:
Australian Reptile Park