00:00 It's a really exciting time for us at Ozark in the Barrington Tops.
00:09 We're currently catching all of our Tasmanian Devils in preparation for the 2023 breeding
00:15 season.
00:16 In catching our adults in order to move them around, it's also the first opportunity we
00:21 have to catch our juveniles that have been born in 2022.
00:29 This is Sandy, or Sandra Dee, and she is one of the Tasmanian Devil joeys born at Ozark
00:34 in 2022.
00:36 Throughout the year we've been monitoring our females with motion-sensored cameras, seeing
00:42 the joeys develop and finally growing up to independent juveniles.
00:49 At around four months old, the joeys no longer fit into mum's pouch very well, so instead
00:54 they hitch a ride on her back.
01:01 Here at Ozark we like to be as hands-off as possible.
01:03 We want our females to raise their joeys just like they would in the wild.
01:10 But we're able to get these insights through our camera technology.
01:15 When we catch one of our juvenile devils, we weigh them, we give them a body condition
01:19 score, we find out their gender.
01:21 This is testicle, so we've got a little boy.
01:25 Give them preventative treatments for internal and external parasites.
01:32 And we also take photos of them from a range of different angles in order to record their
01:37 unique white markings before giving them a microchip as well.
01:41 Good job.
01:44 For our Tasmanian Devil joeys, when we're catching them and giving health checks, because
01:48 they're independent from mum, we don't know who mum is and we certainly don't know who
01:53 dad is either.
01:55 Because making sure genetic diversity is maintained within our population, we need this critical
02:00 information.
02:01 We take a tissue biopsy from the base of their ear and send it to a genetic testing facility.
02:07 They have all of the data for our mums and dads on file, and so in a couple of months
02:12 can let us know who each joey belongs to.
02:16 That's not so big and scary, was it?
02:17 Once each Tasmanian Devil joey is processed, they're then housed in one of our smaller
02:22 short-term intensive enclosures until we have a nice group that are comfortable with each
02:27 other, which will then released into our big managed environmental enclosures.
02:31 [Music]
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