Quarantine fun!

As I've mentioned before, any new animal that comes to Animal Wonders must go through a 30 day minimum quarantine period. During this time they receive their initial examination from the vet and then we watch them for signs of illness that may come to the surface during times of stress. There is usually some amount of stress for the animal to be relocated and adjust to their new environment. Sometimes this will trigger a dormant illness. We want to do our best to protect the animal residents that already reside here so that is why we quarantine.

Right now we have three animals in Quarantine:
Sunny, the Pacific parrotlet
Patches, the guinea pig
Lizzy, the Russian legless lizard.

Since they are all from different animal groups (i.e bird, mammal, reptile) they are safe from contaminating each other during quarantine so they can be housed in the same room. So they do get some interaction with other animals during their Quarantine period, and us as well.

Sunny loves to explore the room! He climbs on the plants and basks in the sunshine on the windowsill. He likes to watch Patches shuffle about and keeps a close eye on Lizzy when she's crawling around. Sunny only has another week before he's free and clear and gets to move into the Bird Room with the rest of the flock. He's successfully eating a very nutritious diet and we will continue to file and monitor his beak growth until it is normal.

Patches needs another trip to the vet to test for a respiratory infection as he's been sneezing a bit. If we were not diligent about this, when we introduced him to Pepper, the Patagonian Cavy, we would be spreading the infection. So every time we interact and play with Patches we thoroughly wash our hands and never use the same tools to clean him as we do to clean another mammal.

Lizzy is doing good. We are anxious to move her out of Quarantine into a larger enclosure since she has shown us she would like more room. We are learning what her favorite foods are: ground turkey and crickets. She does not like mealworms! She is unusually calm for a legless lizard and we are excited to show her off to her first audience!