Peanut Needs a Little Nutrition Help
Greetings!
Again, I am not a rehabber, just a regular citizen doing my best to keep little Peanut alive and happy until he can be released. We've done some things incorrectly and we recognize that, so we are trying to get it right. I'd like to explain what we have done and what we are trying to do now (it will be long, so please bear with me). Any advice/suggestions would be most appreciated.
Okay, so we picked this little guy up off the road and prevented him from becoming road kill. We got him warm, we got him rehydrated, we got him fed (not all in the right order, but at least we didn't kill him). We called a rehabber; they didn't want him. We searched the internet and got him the Esbilac (liquid to start, then switched to powder). We got a small birdcage to hold him instead of the box we first put him in. Based on our research, we figured he was about 5 weeks old when we found him as his eyes were open, but he was still very small.
Knowing that our intent was to release him when the time came, we have limited our contact with him. We have not done a lot of "cuddling" (though we do our share of touching and petting) in an effort to keep him as wild as possible. We have also kept him in a back room, isolated from us and from the dogs (we do leave a TV on). We enter his room a few times a day to feed him and/or care for him. Is this wrong? Should I continue to limit our contact or should we do more? Should we “play” with him? How long? How often? Should I let him out of his cage to roam the room? (Oh, we built him a much larger cage … it is 4’x4’x2’.) Unfortunately, the cage isn’t portable, so I’ve ordered another one for outside. How often does he need to go outside? He gets very nervous when we put him out in the smaller birdcage and put him outside in the sun. I think he feels either confined or exposed or both.
As he aged over the last three/four weeks, we have tried to advance his diet accordingly (we did start early giving him the Kaytee rodent nuggets, which he does nibble). Well, we thought we were doing right by feeding him avocado (which he loves) and plums (from my tree). Trying to think of what he would find out of doors, I gave Peanut a variety of vegetables, fruit, and nuts. In addition to the avocado (which he will NOT find here), we have tried to feed him sweet potato, apples, plums, pears, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, snap peas, squash, pumpkin, brussel sprouts, walnuts, pecans, filberts, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds (both shelled and unshelled). All are in raw form (nothing roasted or salted).
He was doing well eating the avocado and some of the nuts, even learning how to get the seed out of the unshelled sunflower. I also gave him a walnut from our yard (we have both English and Black walnut trees on our property). He learned to use the water bottle we put in his cage. He started taking in less formula at each feeding, so we reduced his formula feedings to twice a day, and even then he didn't take much. I think he lost weight, but I can’t be sure how reliable our gram scale is.
Well, based on what we have learned here, I've stopped feeding him the avocado, the fruit, and the nuts and returned to just formula and rodent blocks (I'm waiting for the HHB to arrive). Since he no longer gets the avocado, etc., he is now RAVENOUS for the formula. He is only barely touching the rodent blocks. The question is should I continue to practice the “tough love” with regard to Peanut’s diet? Obviously I feel bad because he is so hungry and he is relying on us to feed him. Today, after feeding him around 15 ml of formula (yes!) he did still nibble on a rodent block. So, do I continue to feed him as much formula as he wants and how often? Do I continue to give him vegetables from groups 1 and 2 and when? If he is going to be a wild squirrel, shouldn’t he learn to eat what is available in the wild (like the walnuts from my tree)?
So many questions, so little time. I’ll ask about the releasing process at another time.
Thanks in advance!
Peanuts’ Mom
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