IamA Volunteer Australian Wildlife shelter. I've rehabilitated and raised penguins, koalas, kangaroos, wallabys, possums, echidnas, albatross, sugar gliders and many more AMA!

Hey Reddit!

I'm a volunteer wildlife carer in Australia and run a licensed shelter that takes in all sorts of animals. I'm here with my son (pictured in proof photo), who said it would be a good idea for me to do this AMA, and that reddit would probably rather enjoy some of the quirky stories and interesting information we've both got.

As well as rehabilitating injured animals and raising orphaned ones we are also both wildlife rescuers and often get called out to relocate animals from populated areas back to the wild, or respond to animals that have been attacked by dogs, hit by cars, or found in a dire situation.

The shelter that I run is set up predominately to cater for orphaned and injured koalas and seabirds. For the koalas we have 4 outdoor enclosures with pseudo trees and fresh leaf. The babies start off being bottle fed special formula. They start off in the living room when tiny (what a lot of the pictures in the album show) in warm pouches, climbing small trees covered in sheep skin. They are then gradually taken outside and introduced to proper trees. Eventually they are left outside in the enclosure full time and gradually dehumanized. When they reach around 4.0kg's they are released at a suitable location.

Because we were getting a lot of sea birds, particularly penguins, we built a sea bird enclosure with a 6 meter pool. Foxes are a problem here so we had to go to extreme measures to keep them out.

Seabirds in care are generally fed pilchards (small fish that stink) - kilos of the stuff. Giant Petrels are the exception, they eat chickens (not live ones). When they are really hungry they eat two a day.

Proof: Imgur Imgur

This album contains a lot of images of the various animals over the years, sorry about the quality of some of them! And the date stamp is wrong on most. The images are also property of me, and if you want to use them please ask. They album doesn't show every animal that's come through, but gives you a good idea.

http://ift.tt/1HCfM8A

Okay guys! Start asking! We'll be around for about 2 hours, and then come back later and reply to any that we missed!

EDIT: It's 1am in Australia! So bed time for us! Keep the questions coming and we'll answer them in the morning! Thanks for the questions so far!

submitted by AusWildlife to IAmA

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