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| National Seal Sanctuary
| | Issue 33
| | 21st December 2009
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| | This year our pups are in their own pup rehabilitation pool, which means the Animal Care Team can spend a little more time with the residents in the Convalescent Pool.
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| Marlin is being a bit of a trouble maker and even managed to give a little nip to Fatima’s nose, she was given a course of treatment and is all better now.
Sheba, Anneka and Lizzie are all hungry girls and at feeding time Lizzie comes out on to the side, unfortunately the other day Lizzie jumped back into the water with her fish and managed to dunk Anneka on the way in. Anneka now hangs out in the middle of the pool at feeding time, to avoid Lizzie.
Sheba is receving a lot of attention from Marlin, but she is not interested...at the moment.
Snoopy is doing some cage training with our team, and hanging out at the gate in Magnus’s old spot, this means when the team come in with the fish, Snoopy puts her head straight in the bucket to steal the fish.
Both Ray and Marlin are very hungry boys, Marlin is doing his best to protect his females, who are completely uninterested in him, and little Ray has start to grow fur on his face, hopefully he might grow a full coat, but we will have to wait and see.
Atlanta, is like most ladies at this time of the year, is watching her figure and keeping trim for all the Christmas Parties.
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| Sahara is putting on weight and has even had a growth spurt, so the Animal Care Team have upped his fish, he is still looking very handsome.
As you may remember over the last few months we have been doing a little bit of training with our Common seals to get them to sit on the wooden pallet so we can weigh them.
| Luna despite her blindness has every confidence in the team and will happily be weighed, Sija on the other hand not so keen and refuses to do this in front of people. A few days ago we tried in vain to get her to weigh but this time we were successful and she even had an audience not people but the goats and sheep who had broken out of their field, perhaps Sija trusts these animals and thinks that the goats and the ponies won't blab her weight to the other animals.
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| Both Andy and Chaff have been have been enjoying some play session at feeding time, and started a new training commands.
We have been trying to get the seals to go in the caves. Chaff is doing really well with this bit of training Andy not so good we think he is afraid of the dark, and refuses to go in the cave. Also for some unknown reason the fishing pot keeps ending up in the water over night.
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| | Both Flipper and Yulelogs are now back to being best of friends, and Yulelogs has even started to share his haul out area again with Flipper (photo below). Both are also very hungry at the moment.
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| | Starsky and Hutch, our Otters, are unhappy that the wind has now stopped as this means they cannot chase the leaves around their enclosure, and also the wind blowing over the trees meant that they could have some new stepping stone logs. Training is going well and Starsky will now open his mouth on command, and are being weighed weekly. With the weather turning cold over the last few days, the little otters have had their heat lamp put back on.
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All three sea lions have grown over the summer months and are now receiving 9 kilos of fish a day EACH, and they are not even fully grown yet.
Noito is being very bossy in the pool, and making sure everyone obeys him.
André has a bit of a poorly flipper and so has been put on a course of treatment, and is improving everyday.
Photo right - Fat Sea Lion - Noito
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The Sheep are very happy they are in a big new field with lots of lovely fresh grass, the only draw back is hat they are sharing the field with the goats :-(
The ponies upset at been left out of the nice new field with the nice new grass...got Bracken to break the fence down.
The two goats are upset that the ponies and sheep are in their paddocks but receiving lots of attention from visitors.
All three ponies helped Father Christmas over the weekend when he popped in to see the boys and girls.
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On the 13th December 2009 the Sanctuary received two phone calls about seals in trouble. The first came from a caller at Newquay who was reporting a very thin pup on the beach at Porth.
The second call came from a gentleman at Gwithian who was concerned about a seal also. It was decided that both seals were in poor condition and would be brought back to the Sanctuary. First to arrive was the pup from Gwithian named ‘Sirius Black’, this little male seal was around 8 weeks old with an ulcer to the bottom of his mouth, with puncture wounds to his rear flippers, very dehydrated and in poor body condition.
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The second pup is a little girl who has been named ‘Winky’.
She has an ulcer to her left eye.
This eye may have to be removed but at the moment we are trying everything possible to save it.
Winky has scuffs to her nail beds, was extremely dehydrated also suffering from mouth ulcers.
Both are receiving treatment and making improvements everyday.
Photos below:
Sirius Black (left); Winky (middle); Severus Snape (right)
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Our next pup call came on the 18th December 2009 from Salcombe in Devon. Due to its location we had to send out volunteers who found the pup on the beach, once again it was another pup suffering dehydration, the pup was quickly loaded and transferred to the Sanctuary. In our SOS hospital we could start this pup on a course of fluids, which would help to stabilise its condition while we did a more in-depth clinical assessment. The pup was around 8 weeks old and only 14 kilos meaning this seal was also malnourished, it also had puncture wounds to it rear flippers, which were cleaned and treated. This pup is a little boy and been named Severus Snape.
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