olorin19
04-13-2018, 10:06 AM
Mookie is now seven months old. He has been with me since he was four weeks old, overwintering in a large cage and coming out onto the covered front porch twice daily to run around and play.
As he will be released as a male singleton, my question is this: When is the best time to transition him to the wild? My original plan was to get his cage outside shortly when there is more leaf cover, then start leaving the cage door open a few weeks later. This worked fine with Dustin (born August 2014) in spring 2015.
Dustin has twice been injured during mating season (June 2016 and January 2017) with bite wounds.
So, I am wondering if it might better to wait a bit longer until mating season was over before releasing Mookie.
Any opinions are most welcome!
Photo has Mookie inside the porch and Dustin just outside the glass door outside. Dustin is not a large squirrel, whereas Mookie has never seemed to be a runt. He was found by some unknown person who left him by our porch. This was right after several days of really high winds, so my guess is that his nest was blown down as opposed to Mookie being a runt that was kicked out.
Whenever I feed Dustin, he often jumps onto my hand to eat. When I go back inside, Mookie gets very excited smelling Dustin on my hand. We are pretty sure Mookie wants to be like Dustin when he grows up!
300659
As he will be released as a male singleton, my question is this: When is the best time to transition him to the wild? My original plan was to get his cage outside shortly when there is more leaf cover, then start leaving the cage door open a few weeks later. This worked fine with Dustin (born August 2014) in spring 2015.
Dustin has twice been injured during mating season (June 2016 and January 2017) with bite wounds.
So, I am wondering if it might better to wait a bit longer until mating season was over before releasing Mookie.
Any opinions are most welcome!
Photo has Mookie inside the porch and Dustin just outside the glass door outside. Dustin is not a large squirrel, whereas Mookie has never seemed to be a runt. He was found by some unknown person who left him by our porch. This was right after several days of really high winds, so my guess is that his nest was blown down as opposed to Mookie being a runt that was kicked out.
Whenever I feed Dustin, he often jumps onto my hand to eat. When I go back inside, Mookie gets very excited smelling Dustin on my hand. We are pretty sure Mookie wants to be like Dustin when he grows up!
300659