Lions are some of the most revered animals in human history. In many ancient civilisations they were thought of as a God.
Devils First Health Check
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Tasmanian devil keepers Tony & Lisa with this breeding season's joeys.
28 October 2009
Our four squirmy Devil joeys have just had their first health check and our vets took the chance to get samples for a paternity check as well.
After we moved them the mother to a separate den, Tony and I were able to pick them up from the nest box.
It was a great experience to hold them as the breeding season had started slowly in February and we didn’t know how it would all go with our breeding Devils, the females Martha, Kiwi and Takina, and males, Theo, Tex and Mick.
Textbook devil breeding seemed to be non-existent this year, with a lot of their behaviours quite new to us. There were times when our females weren’t receptive to the charms and strength of our males Theo, Tex and Mick. At times it seemed like this just wasn’t going to be the season for our devils.
But things did get going and we saw a mating in May but had to wait another three months before we could do a pouch check in June to see if there any new additions.
The task of pouch checking Martha wasn’t easy. You can imagine trying to look in the pouch with a very narrow opening of quite a feisty female, but we saw one joey and that was a fantastic result.
After many months of watching the growth of Martha’s pouch and the little ones slowly start to become too big for the pouch today I finally got to hold one. This experience was a highlight of my career and such a positive for the breeding season.
The joeys had their first general health check and were implanted with a microchip to help us identify them. I’m proud to say that we have four very healthy devil joeys, three males and one female.
