Gerdy, The Red Necked Wallaby

It was a Saturday morning in July this year that I was leaving our property to head into town. At the end of our driveway near the highway was the body of a Red Necked Wallaby. I got out to check and as I approached could hear the calling of a joey.

When I inspected the pouch, inside I found a just furring female joey. Her extremities were starting to get cold, but her body was still warm. I would say the mother had been killed in the early hours of the morning. Sadly whoever hit the mother, didn't bother to check to see if there was a joey in pouch, which is often the case.

Gerdy (named after my mother), seemed fine apart from some slight bruising to her right leg, however after 2 days swelling was noticable and it was decided to get an X-Ray of her leg to check for fractures. X-Rays didn't show any fractures apart from an old hip fracture which had occured and healed whilst she was still in pouch.

Some 3 days later her left leg started to contract and she couldn't straighten it. We decided to take her to a wonderful vet in Queanbeyan who is more experienced with macropods for assessment.

I was told that she had a slipped tendon and there had been a number of cases presented this season with joeys coming in from the wild with the problem. The vet advised splinting the leg in an outstretched position for 3 weeks to allow the tendon to go back to it's normal position.

Gerdy was fine with her splint and didn't stress as she was still pouch bound. Once the 3 week period had passed we started to give her rest times without the splint and allow her to excercise her leg. By this point she was at the age of emerging from pouch so the timing was perfect.

Unfortunately the splinting had not resolved the issue fully, so a light bandage with vetwrap over the top was used on Gerdy's leg to give support and stop the tendon from slipping whilst she learnt how to hop.

At no time has Gerdy ever shown signs of stress by having her leg bandaged, perhaps because she had it done at such a young age, she's grown used to putting her leg out for me to bandage.

She's now a energetic youngster who is almost fully emerged from pouch, and loves to race up and down our hallways at night. During the day she spends time with her mob of Eastern Grey joeys and a Swamp Wallaby in their pre-release paddock. I continue to bandage her leg for periods of 48 hours and then stretch the amount of time without her bandage. The last break from bandage was 9 days and I'm hopefull that one day she'll be able to go without a support bandage altogether and be released with our other babies.

As you can see in the photo below she's happy and having fun and loves being known as a "Rare Pink Legged Wallaby".

Carola Vamvakaris
October, 2005

Footnote : Sadly a week before Christmas 2005, Gerdy was taken from us after a vicious wild dog/fox attack. Gerdy's leg had fully healed and no longer required a support bandage. She would have been released back to the wild in Spring 2006.