Dobby and Harry were born at the rescue center on the 29/7/06 everything went well untill two weeks later when we heard the babies crying excessively, when we looked at them it was found that the mum had become obsessed with licking them, and licked away the entrance to there private parts, leaving a big hole and by the look of it had stoped feeding them, or they had stoped feeding because of the pain they were in. Fearing the worst they were taken to the vets, the vet said they may survive the damage, but they were very weak, in pain, and couldn't go back to there mum, so they would have to be hand reared, he said he would put them to sleep if we wanted, it may end in heartache but we had to give them the chance of life, so back to the rescue they went.
Hand rearing two week old babies is never the best option and it was not going well, so it was decided to try putting the baby's with Stumpy, she had given birth five weeks earlier to three baby girls, because her baby's were three weeks older, introducing the babies was worrying, more so because of there condition, we rubbed the two boys together with Stumpy's girls,which started all the babies crying, Stumpy got very agitated at this and started biting the cage wire, to get to her babies, not what we wanted, we put all the babies in the cage and Stumpy grabbed the first baby boy around the neck and she just looked at us, for what seemed like ages, she could kill him with one bite, then she turned and put him to the back of the nest, she did the same with the other boy then the three girls, it was time to move out of sight, but still listen to what was going on, all went well. The picture above was taken one hour after introducing the babies, with the two gray colored boys feeding on Stumpy who is asleep, you can see the difference in size with the baby girls.