See Kiri-kou on Youtube!!
Click here to access Youtube and then type in baby otter feeding in the Youtube search
 

Marguerite King films Jan with Kirikou as Jan looks on	Marguerite and Simon watch Kirikou in her new indoor pen
Marguerite and Simon	Colin, Vic and Malcom proudly present their two otter boxes to Jan at Shetland Scrapstore in Lerwick

KIRIKOU

There have been lots of developments during February and March…Kirikou has moved house, started eating whole fish and is making friends with a TV presenter!
First things first - her back legs are still improving. It appears that feeling is coming into the upper legs and tail, but the pads on her back paws still seem to be numb, which is causing us concern.
Thanks to our friend Ross Flett, at Orkney Seal Rescue, we have made contact with animal osteopath Tony Nevin, of Zoo Ost Ltd, in Gloucestershire, who has given us good advice on touch therapy. This seems to be having some positive results, but we realise there is still a long way to go. We have to be patient and hope that she continues to let us handle her so that we can keep giving her touch therapy.
BBC wildlife presenter Simon King has paid us a visit as part of the series he is making about Shetland. The first day he came over to interview Jan and meet Kirikou was the day we moved her out of the house and into her own indoor pen.
She responded amazingly well to her new surroundings and proved to be a bit of a natural in front of the camera. This was also her first experience in a full-size bath where she used her back legs to walk up and down to collect her fish from one end and eat it at the other. She was very proud of herself…and so were we. Hydrotherapy!
Simon returned a week later with his wife Marguerite to see how Kirikou was progressing and lo and behold she made another breakthrough. Initially he was quite disappointed that she hadn’t improved more. He hoped she would no longer be dragging her feet. However during their visit he suggested we give her a whole fish (we had so far only given her small pieces of filleted whiting). She went absolutely bonkers! She was so excited and became an adolescent otter instantly. Much to our amazement she ate the bones and all, giving her much needed calcium, and started to use her back legs a whole lot more in the bath, the pen and even outside on the grass. Whole fish therapy!
We have noticed how much more she uses her back legs when she has a new experience. So we need lots more stimulation!
On top of all this we now have two new boxes for her to move into - one for indoors (flat roof) and one for the outdoors (pitched roof), We would like to thank Vic, Colin and Norman at Shetland Scrapstore for making them to our specification and then donating them. We are delighted…and hopefully Kirikou will be too.

click here to see Kirikou with Tony Nevin animal osteopath

click here to see Kirikou experience water and eat her first whole fish

click here to see Kirikou as a baby

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