Today we adopted Kit and Kut , the latest in our squirrel orphans. That makes it 9 of them in all. It all started with UhUh ( seen in the pic with Simba) who we got in almost an year ago … … Back then we did not know anything about hand rearing squirrel babies. Swati painstakingly re-searched the net and turned up with precious little – except for the fact the these are Indian Palm Squirrels and come in two varieties the northern ones are three striped and those from the south have five stripes.
BTW all our squirrels are name by son Aasim – and the first one was named UhUh because that is what he said when he saw it.
All references on the net were of feeding the larger kinds Grey and Brown squirrels, BUT one thing in common was that these babies need full strength milk and something has to be added to prevent constipation – Corn Syrup was advised form the west – Swati substituted it with Dabur honey the light brown kinds, vitamin supplement in the form of a tiny drop of Hovite syrup keeps the babies active.
They were fed with a 2 cc syringe and a closely cropped 18no infant feeding tube.
Plus being a doctor I advised the same level of care as that is given for a young infant – that meant boiling syringes and the feeding tube before feeding, washing hands with antiseptic soap before handling, nest of sterile cotton changed every 12 hrs or more frequently.
Luckily we haven’t lost any squirrel babies – even kuku who had developed lactose intolerance and diarrhea got better when we switched to Zerolac. Thankfully most orphans are ready to be released back in the wild in less than 6 weeks!!
Anyone who wants to know the formula can write to swati at sanisoft dot com