Hi guys! Welcome back to Animal Wonders.
I'm Jessi - today we have an unscripted show because I'm really excited to share someone new with you.
We've only had her for five days, so let's just - let's just meet her!
[ ♪ Intro ]
Here she is!
Look how little and cute she is!
This is an African Crested Porcupine, and she's only about 3 weeks old.
She's tiny right now, but she's gonna get huge.
Right now we're just laying down the foundation of her getting to know us and us getting to know her.
So, just trying to figure her out and see what she's all about.
She's getting kind of hungry right now so I'm going to go ahead and make up her food.
We're going to feed her some fresh goat milk and we want to warm that up.
We also want to give her some produce so this is puréed pear and carrot.
We want to put that in a syringe for easier feeding,
And lastly we're going to give her some medicine: a very mild antibiotic and some eye drops.
We're first going to start with the milk.
She's just starting to eat on her own.
Now normally they'd be eating on their own by this age but she was kind of sick when she came to us.
So we're just kind of nursing her back to health.
I want to see if she'll take this on her own.
[cooing] yea, yea, oh there, almost..
There you go! Good girl!
I'm hoping that she'll take about 15 milliliters per feeding.
I would love if she took 25.
We're feeding her four times a day, trying to get 100 milliliters in
but she usually quits at about 10 milliliters.
So I have to try and entice her to eat more.
African Crested Porcupines are known to be quite, um.. hungry little guys
So for her not to be wanting tons and tons of food means that she is feeling under the weather.
So that's why we're giving antibiotics.
So as she pauses a little bit here, I'm going to go ahead and give her some of her antibiotics
and then finish that off with some more food.
[To the porcupine] This is not so fun, huh?
[Porcupine vocalizes]
[To the porcupine] There you go.
If I just let her regulate her own eating, she would end up becoming dehydrated.
So I really need to make sure that I keep pushing her until she gets at least 15.
Alright, and there we go! That's 15, good girl.
Wipe your face.
Alright, now I want to add on extra fiber to her diet so she's going to eventually wean off this milk,
probably in the next couple of weeks.
And I want her eating lots of good, healthy produce.
So that's why I have a blend of pear and carrot
and she can also eat things like sweet potato, yam, or apple, those types of things.
So right now this is what we're going to try
[To the porcupine] Does it smell good?
[whispers] She likes it. She knows this!
This is so good!
The way that she's eating this, this tells me that she's she's feeling much better!
Her stomach is feeling better, just everything, everything about her is - is feeling better.
I'm hoping that soon I can just give her chunks of produce and she'll start using her awesome rodent teeth
and she'll just munch them down, but until then I'll keep giving her the purée.
Because she seems to like this so much
I think it might be--
[To the porcupine, laughing] you're getting all messy.
I think it might be a great way to reinforce her in the future as we begin to train her.
Speaking of training, I've already started getting her desensitized to a harness so that we can walk her around safely.
And I'm doing it in the middle of a feeding because
I want her to kind of ignore it.
It'll go on, and then I'll reinforce her.
So she didn't want that reinforcement, that's alright,
I'm going to use body massage as a reinforcement instead.
She just melts in my hand, look at that, aw that's so good.
The good stuff right there.
A lot of people think that "oh it's a porcupine, it's gonna be pokey" but
she's an African Crested Porcupine, which means that these quills are not barbed
like North American Porcupines or South American Porcupines.
So even if I touch them, they're a little bit pokey but they're not going to stick into my skin.
And they're only on her back here, so they're not on her belly and they're not on her legs or arms.
Alright, now I'm going to take the harness off.
Just keep it on for a little bit.
We're working on desensitization so we don't want her to become sensitized to it,
so we don't want to be a bad thing, we just want it to be just, a normal thing.
This happens and it's not so bad.
She's still just getting her feet under her.
When she came to us she was very wobbly and she couldn't hold up her own weight.
Like I said, she was a little bit sick.
So this is really great to see her walking around really stable.
She's very adventurous right now, not very curious, just adventurous.
You know syringes, huh. Is that yours, are you taking it?
This is all your medicine
Oh, you know that huh? You want some more of that?
Yup, looks like we'll use this as a reinforcement.
Alright, that was pretty fun, I love how adventurous she is.
Now the last thing I have to do before our morning session ends, is I have to give her some eye drops.
She has a little ulcer in her right eye, on her right cornea
and the left one is a little bit goopy so...
We're gonna go ahead and just give her mild antibiotic drops in each eye.
That's it!
I'm so excited to be able to share her with you from the very beginning,
I'm hoping that she grows up nice and big and strong, and she can be an amazing ambassador.
Thanks for joining me today!
Oh! We do NOT have a name for her yet, so if you have any name suggestions,
go ahead and leave them in the comments below.
And, of course, if you'd like to go on an adventure with us every week subscribe to our YouTube channel, Animal Wonders Montana.
Thanks, and we'll see you next week!
[ ♪ Outro ]
Even though Sherman and Groucho were the same species as Prickle,
Sherman was calm and easy going, Groucho was shy and a a bit of a grump,
and Prickle is totally different.