When Jolene, an adorable albino wallaby, was rejected by her mother at three months old, her chances of survival were ‘slim’.
But, after being hand-reared on goat’s milk and nursed in farm worker Heather Hogarty’s makeshift pouch, she’s now a healthy six-month-old.
‘She was thrown out of the pouch by her mother at about three months old,’ says Heather, a manager at Whitehouse Farm in Northumberland – where the joey was born.
‘Normally they don’t start coming out until they’re about six months, so we tried to put her back but she wouldn’t accept her back.’
Heather believes Jolene’s mum may have become frightened and jumped – causing the little wallaby to fall out.
‘It’s not very common for this to happen,’ Heather adds.
‘But even if the babies have been out of the pouch for an hour, the mothers can be funny about having them back.’
Heather decided to take Jolene’s life into her own hands, creating a pouch out of her shirt and bottle-feeding the wallaby with goat’s milk.
‘For a month or so I used to take her home every night and she would have feeds during the night,’ says Heather.
She adds: ‘We’ve been looking after and rearing her ourselves.
‘We were fortunate at the time that all of our goats were kidding – so we could feed her on their milk.’
According to Heather, goat’s milk has all the nutrients a baby wallaby needs, and that it probably ‘saved her life.’
While Jolene is still on a bottle, she’s also eating other foods – and is now thriving.
‘She’s also got a little wallaby friend at the moment and we hope to get her back with the others before long,’ says Heather. ‘She’s lovely.’
Jolene was kept away from visitors for the first few weeks in case she didn’t survive, but she can now be seen at the farm in Morpeth, Northumberland.
‘She’s just over six months now and perfectly healthy and she’s dead lively,’ Heather says.
She’s also slowly being reintroduced to the rest of the farm animals, starting with the other wallabies, and staff expect the process to be pretty straightforward.
‘We will hopefully have her back with the rest of the mob by the end of the summer,’ says Heather.
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