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Please Help Us Feed Our Young Seal Patients by Contributing to the 2012 Dollar-a-Pound Campaign!
Our goal is to purchase at least 40,000 lb of fish (at $1 per lb) by June 30 so we can feed young seal patients like Desora during pupping season!
Remember, every drop (or fish) in the bucket counts!
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Progress:
24%
Raised: $ 9726 Goal: $ 40000 |
Here's how your gift helps...
$1 = 1 pound of fish
$10 = 1 meal for 1 seal pup
$50 = meals for 1 pup for 1 day (they need extra stuff in their fish milkshakes to help them grow strong!)
$75 = meals and meds for a seal pup for 1 day
You can make a real difference for our seal pup patients today!
As strange as it might seem, many of our young harbor and elephant seal patients have never seen the wide open ocean nor tasted a fish! In many cases, these young animals became orphaned before the weaning process as a result of human interference, predators, or sometimes even mother nature, as big storms can wash tiny pups off of rocks. With no mother in sight, these young animals stand a dismal chance at survival.
Through our Leave Seals Be public awareness program, we encourage beach goers like you to let us know about these young animals so that we can determine if they need rescue, and if so, provide the proper rehabilitation and care in the form of nourishment and medicine to get them healthy and ready to be returned to the wild.
Did you know that we feed approximately 96,000 lb of herring to the hundreds of patients we admit to our hospital each year?
At our hospital, many of these seal pups start out on tube-feeding because they don't have teeth yet, or they're too weak to eat on their own. Our animal care crews provide pups with a special concoction. For the first three days, it's made of electroytes, vitamins and kaopectate to prepare their system to accept formula. Then, they get "fish milkshakes" made of ground herring, water and salmon oil. With many years of experience, we've learned that this method is the most effective way to ensure the seal pups receive all of the nutrients they need. Over time, each seal is taught by our animal care volunteers how to eat a fish whole - head first, of course!
Eventually, seal pups at our hospital develop and master the skill to free feed in a pool all on their own. When that happens, we know they are on the road to recovery (barring any other medical conditions). Once they gain good body weight and strength, they get a final exam by our veterinarians, and then the now healthy animal is released back to the ocean.
