Tuesday, 19 July 2011

The koalas from Crestwood

When I was walking around the yards I saw that two of the Joeys in yard 6 (the Joey yard) were down and eating their leaf. I went over to have a look and saw it was Dunbogan Dave and Crestwood Matilda.

Here is a short video of them:


Did you know that you can "adopt" Dunbogan Dave and Crestwood Matilda (which helps raise money for the Koala Hospital)?


Dunbogan Dave



Crestwood Matilda


Crestwood Matilda was admitted in February 2011. She was found in a backyard with some dogs. When she came in we found out that she was infested with ticks, which is often an indicator that the koala had been on the ground for some time.
We don't know if something happened to the mother or that she abandoned Matilda.

Crestwood Matilda weighed only 1.85 kg when she came in and was too young to take care of herself. That is why she went into homecare with one of our great home carers. The carer gave Matilda supplemental feeding every two hours. Matilda was in poor condition when she was found, but soon was gaining weight and became a bright little Joey.

When she was weighed on the 15th of April, it was clear that she was ready to be released in our "Joey" yard. When they weigh around the 2,5 kg, they are big enough to start taking care of themselves and don't need the supplemental feeding anymore.
In the Joey yard they can start to "dehumanise". That means that their contact with people is limited and they get used to life outside, climb trees and eat leaf.


Crestwood Matilda


Crestwood Matilda is living in this yard for a few months now and has the company of three other Joeys. One of them is Dunbogan Dave. When they are strong enough to survive on their own (that is when they are around 3/3,5 kg), we are going to release them into the wild.


Crestwood Matilda


Koalas are territorial and have a home range that they live in for their entire life. That is why we always release them in the same area where we rescued them. But because a Joey doesn't have his own territory yet, we can release him somewhere else. That means we can choose a good spot where there are less cars, dogs and humans.


Crestwood Matilda


Adopt Crestwood Matilda now, by clicking here!
Adopt Dunbogan Dave now, by clicking here!

A great koala who you can also adopt is our big "dude" Crestwood Spike!
He is a 5 year old male who was in the Hospital with Conjunctivitis. That is caused by a Chlamydia bacteria.


Crestwood Spike


He was admitted in March 2011 and was found on a fence in a backyard. The kids there named him "Spike".

In the beginning we thought he was going to be a "difficult" patient. He was not very happy with any human handling. But soon he turned into a good patient and we treated him with the normal antibiotics along with the Bioptron. He was the first koala we started our Bioptron trial on. It is a color therapy with polychromatic light that is used for healing.
He didn't mind the light, but Spike was a koala who couldn't sit still. Sometimes you had to follow him with the light when he was moving around on his gunyah in the ICU.

His eyes were soon much better and we released him again in April 2011.

Adopt Crestwood Spike now, by clicking here!

Yon

3 comments:

Jan said...

What great stories as well as pictures and videos of these 3 adorable koalas. They all deserve to be adopted.

Excellent job Yon!!!

Marilia said...

They're really lovely!!! Great video!

Loreen said...

Hi Sam!!!! I love your blog and wish you would post more! I adopted Crestwood Matilda and am glad to know that she is doing fine. What handsome little fluffballs!

I'll be sending an email to you folks at the hospital soon with pictures I drew of the koalas (I drew the late Bea (RIP) and Barry).


Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Sincerely,

Loreen

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