SWWR news
New Animal Care Manager
We are very pleased to introduce our new Animal Care Manager, Sara Cowan. Many of you will probably have seen Sara on the programme called Wildlife SOS which features the work of Wildlife Aid in Guildford. Sara heads our team of dedicated animal care staff at our centre and has brought with her extensive knowledge in wildlife care.
We were soon testing her knowledge to the limit when a roe deer was knocked down on the road late on a Thursday evening. The doe appeared to be suffering from concussion but she was also very heavily pregnant. She remained lying down all of Friday and was still down on Saturday so a vet was called to make sure there were not any internal injuries. Deer for some reason go blind with stress for anything up to a week after accidents. The vet was able to quickly assess the deer as we moved her on to fresh bedding and changed her so that she was lying on a different side. Nothing appeared to be too obvious and the birth of the fawns did not seem to be imminent so the decision was made to watch her over the next few days and see how she went. On Sunday morning Val, one of our animal carers, went down to check her first thing. She quickly radioed Pauline as the deer had given birth but the fawn seemed to be half in and half out. Luckily it was only the bale of hay that was stopping the fawn from slipping
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straight out so it was soon laid by it’s mother’s head to dry.
We then had a further problem as the deer continued to have contractions but 3 hours later, nothing had happened. Colin Fountain was able to help (Maria’s husband) who has worked with animals all his life. The fawn was not presented correctly but by getting the fawn back into the right position, the deer quickly gave birth to the second one. We sadly lost one of the fawns the first night but the other fawn survived. The mother did not take to her remaining baby but we were able to allow the fawn to suckle to get the first milk that is so rich in anti-bodies.
Eventually the fawn joined the group of orphans that Sara and Val have worked so hard with. Although the deer never really got to know her
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