Oh deer: Prim the motherly kelpie fosters fawn
CATHERINE GROENESTEIN
Prim the kelpie loves her babies, even if they have hooves, not paws.
The8-year-old red kelpie is self-appointed chief babysitter at Stoney Oaks wildlife park, near Inglewood.
Her latest charge is an orphaned fallow deer fawn named Delilah.
As well as greeting visitors and watching over her owners Gail and Trevor Simons, Prim spends her time mothering baby animals.
The dog ‘babysits’ piglets while their mothers graze, and has helped raise lambs, kids, calves and other fawns.
“She’s amazing ... she loves every animal,” Gail Simons said.
But she was surprised when Prim started producing milk for her new “baby”, even though she last had a litter of pups two years ago.
Normally, deer instinctively dislike dogs, but Delilah, who had a tough start to life, quickly bonded with Prim, Simons said.
“She had a skinned nose, skinned knees and sore ears, she had been jumping out of fences, and was terrified of the dog where she had been.”
Prim spontaneously started making milk for Delilah, enough that the fawn sometimes wasn’t hungry enough to drink its bottle.
“She’s tiny for her age. She likes eating grass and pellets too, and maybe she’s getting a bit more than I thought off the dog.”
Prim had always been extremely motherly, Simons said, and previously helped raise two other fawns that Simons was bottle-feeding. The dog, which was then pregnant with her own litter, would try to suckle the fawns, Simons said.
“When she had the pups, I had to keep her away from the fawns once they realised there was milk coming out, so the pups wouldn’t miss out.”
When she’s in season, Prim spends her days in the rabbit enclosure, and even the guinea pigs and bantams with their chicks are safe with her.
She lies down with piglets, calves, lambs and kid goats, and licks them. “She’s 100% trustworthy, she loves everybody and has never hurt anything,” Simons said.
Prim liked to spend as much time as possible in the paddocks with her foster babies and other animals.
It could be a case of a dog taking after its owner’s characteristics.
After nearly 35 years running the private wildlife park, Gail Simons still loves her life there.
“Animals are the love of my life, my passion in life,” she said.
Prim is one of many animals in her menagerie of hand-raised and friendly critters that lap up attention from visitors.
“People love the hands-on [experience] here, they can go out into the paddock and cuddle a Nubian goat or a Valais blacknose sheep. We have guinea pigs and rabbits.”
There were pigs that loved to have their bellies scratched, and cattle which could be hand-fed hay.