Little Ferguson

This is little Ferguson who is nearly 4 kg but totally emaciated and had to live through that torrential flood we had.

He came to us from John Creighton wombat care Bundanoon … Southern Highlands Wildlife Sanctuary.

The little fellow was on deaths door. Although there was so much water around he was dehydrated and malnourished because he lost his mum for at least three weeks before we found him. We can tell because he was so emaciated.

He was so dehydrated that he could not defecate and he couldn’t even eat. The gut had stopped.

You can see in the photo, the Scats was so tiny and rockhard and this was after an enema. He would drink a bit of milk but we would have to force feed him a slurry to keep his gut going. They must have fibre for high gut fermentation, just milk is not enough. So it became a race against time, he just would not eat independently.

Further complications were because he lost his mum and their instincts are so strong they demand care from other Wombats. We don’t know if any Wombats accept orphans, but we do know that these little guys are tenacious and they get a hiding from trying to impose on others.

Some people might think that’s cruel, but the Wombat world is dangerous and often hostile. Their homes are destroyed and just like us if our needs are met we are quite peaceful, but if they’re not, there’s a war or conflict.

If there’s enough water, friends, food and shelter the Wombats are harmonious, but when this is removed from them by human intervention like cars and development and burying their friends alive, they feel the trauma and become stressed and defensive.

You can see here in these pictures that he is recovering and his eyes were quite bright however he still wasn’t defecating and that means if the gut stops that he will die of blood poisoning because the waste won’t be able to leave and of course the organs will fail. Organ failure what’s the problem with then had to face.

So again, a race against time. The infected skin (after being bitten by a wombat that didn’t want him ) needed antibiotics, and it was very painful.

We had to then have an x-ray to make sure there was no more  impacted stools which there wasn’t. Listening into a stethoscope, there were no sounds in the stomach. This was very alarming so one of our beautiful vets gave him a peristaltic stimulant. With one injection he was going to the toilet normally within 2 hours and luckily this aspect of his metabolism stabilised.

So as you can see, there’s so many factors that need expert observation and lots and lots and lots of medication and at the right time. Hours and hours of observation and cleaning bedding ongoing labour is so necessary and these instances and of course for the rest of their time in care.

He was so cold when he came in he had to be warmed very slowly so his body could digest the nutrients.

But then the next nightmare. His fingers were swelling dreadfully. We wondered if it was the milk we wondered if it was something else but another beautiful brilliant vet pinned the problem which was infection from sitting in the wet mud for extended periods. So of course this needed to be treated.

When wombats are very sick they stand on all fours (as you could see in the first photo when Ferguson was so compromised) He may have been trying to dig his way out of a flooded burrow. Perhaps his mum drowned, very difficult to know. But I’ve seen little babies scratch the roof of the burrow to try to keep oxygen and I have seen them swim out of flooded burrows but sometimes the adults find it a lot harder but of course babies are very vulnerable. The worst thing is the silt from development and poor land management that fills the burrows and doesn’t subside which then of course drowns them because they cannot get out. Lucky this little fellow made it.

But now with antibiotics and anti-inflammation meds he’s on the mends and we can see a bright future for him.

He’s Treatment alone cost $450. Now with milk, hard feed and to be in care for around two years this amounts $1000s upon thousands of dollars.

© WOMBATISED 2025