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5. ENCLOSURE
CONSTRUCTION (con'td)
Please
click on thumbnail pictures to enlarge
B.
Enclosures for the Hairy-nosed Wombat
Method One
Our
first enclosure was a ‘one off’ and although it
served us well for many years but had some
drawbacks which I will come to in a moment. It
was constructed in the following manner
The
materials used were permapine poles for posts and
rails with 100 x 100 x 2.5mm welded mesh for the
fencing material. By the way, do not let
anyone talk you into using high tensile welded
mesh to contain this type of animal – you will
regret it!! I was and I did! Always use
soft galvanised. Wombats will “work” or “worry”
the wire and high tensile wire will work harden
very quickly and break, allowing escapes (again, I
speak from bitter experience).
The
first thing I did was to determine where the
perimeter had to be, using much the same method as
we had with our feral-proof macropod
enclosures. Then I hired a Ditch Witch and dug
a trench along this line to a depth of about 1m
and into it dropped the weldmesh and the posts.
The posts were not set into concrete.
Then I used further permapine poles nailed to the
tops of the posts to make the rails. Post
height above ground was approximately 800mm.
This meant that I had the weldmesh 800mm above
ground and 1000mm below ground which is part of
the weakness in this method. In our case, the
depth to which the Ditch Witch had gone down meant
that it had severed a main arterial root of one of
our trees and it died slowly over the following
year causing us some headaches in having to remove
it. (It was too dangerous to leave where it
was, otherwise we would have). The other problem
was that the wire rusted out at ground level. It
seemed to be O.K. well below ground and certainly
O.K. above ground but an inch or so under the
surface, was where the problem started to
appear. It had to be patched in several places,
although to be fair, at the time it has been there
for over ten years. I suppose we shouldn’t
expect it to last forever.
At
that time, that enclosure had two young animals in
it and they both got out through a single broken
strand! It still seems quite amazing to me,
that these animals could squeeze through a fence
with only one strand of wire broken. Remember,
the wire was as described before, 100mm (4”) x
100mm (4”) welded mesh and with one strand broken
this meant that these animals had squeezed through
an opening 100mm (4”) x 200mm (8”) – seems
inconceivable doesn’t it - but it happened!.
One
metre deep is not deep enough to stop a wombat
digging underneath and out of the confines of the
enclosure, but as these animals do not, for some
inexplicable reason, dig upwards, this should not
cause you any concern. If there is to be any
concern it should be with the soil types as there
may be the danger of tunnel collapse and if an
animal is this deep it is going to be extremely
difficult to locate, or dig out, of a collapsed
tunnel
Method two
A
much easier, (and less expensive) way to build a
wombat enclosure, is basically the same as above,
using the permapine post and rail method, but not
placing the wire into the ground; instead, fold
it inwards at ground level.
First
you will need to dig holes for the posts and drop
them in place then attach the rails. The depth
of the holes should not be less than about 400mm
and there is no need to set the posts in concrete,
just back fill with the soil taken out if the
holes. If you like you can mix this soil with
dry cement first, then back fill around the posts
and water in. Tip: attach the rails to the
posts before you back fill the post
holes. This way you can make last minute
adjustment to the posts if required.
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Figure 14
One of several wombat enclosures we have built showing the original
purpose built dens (now unused) and some of the animals’ own excavations. |
The
next step is to clear the ground within the
enclosure where you are going to fold the wire
onto the ground. This is just a simple matter
of raking or shovelling off the loose surface
soil, keeping this in the centre of the enclosure
for the time being. Then attach the wire to
the posts and rails using barbed staples then fold
the wire down. You may find that you will have
to peg it down using steel tent pegs or similar to
hold it in place. If you do not want to go to
the expense of using tent pegs, a good substitute
is to make your own from 4mm galvanised wire which
can be bought quite cheaply by the roll. Just
cut and bend to the required and shape and away
you go! You can leave these in place
permanently. Then replace the soil you had
removed to the centre of the enclosure back to
cover the wire. If you wish you can spread
around some leaf litter over the wire just to make
it look good.
To
attach the welded mesh to the posts and rails
needs a lot of patience – this stuff has a mind of
its own! I have found the easiest way to do
this is to measure each straight length of fence
first. Then cut the wire to that length and
pre-fold it lengthwise somewhere convenient and
carry it folded to the site. (This is a two
person job, although one could manage it, but it
is much more difficult). Fix one half of the
fold to the posts and/or rails then unfold it onto
the enclosure floor. Don’t be tempted to do too
much length in one cut.
Alternatively, if you have a long length of
straight fence to do as in the case of the
enclosure shown at figure 14; this one fence line
used a full 30m roll of welded mesh and because of
the excessive length it was treated a little
differently. We attached it to
the rails first, starting at one end and working
our way along to the other end.
Then fixed the wire down at each post and bent it
to shape as we went.
Using
this method will give you a metre of ground all
around the inside perimeter of the enclosure that
is covered in mesh (and a double covering in the
corners). This has a couple of
advantages. Firstly it does not
seem to rot so readily and, as wombats seem to
prefer to dig against some sort of obstruction, or
in a corner, it tends to have the effect of
encouraging the animals to dig where there is no
wire (i.e. in the central area of the run) where there
is less likelihood of them escaping.
The only major disadvantage I have found with this
system is that if the animals decide to dig at the
edge of the wire on the floor and are not forced
to go down very deep (as with the other system)
there is a higher potential for tunnel collapse
and subsequent escape.
Access Gates
To
put it bluntly, I do not like access gates in
wombat enclosures. However, some of our earlier
enclosures have gate access and the later ones do
not. A gate is not necessary as long as you
have a spot where you can slide over the fence
comfortably and quickly. When dealing with
these animals a quick escape route is essential
and a gate is definitely not the quickest
way of getting out of an enclosure in a hurry.
After many years of experience in working with
these animals in a captive situation I much prefer
to use styles for these enclosures
(see Figure 15).
These are very simply made with a few off cuts of
treated pine logs, an odd end of a stout
piece of timber and a few 150mm (6”) nails.
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Figure 15
A couple of different examples of styles |
If
you do prefer to have a gate, it gives you a point
of weakness where the animal has the potential to
escape. Make sure the gate is well fitting
particularly at ground level. It is a good idea
to make a concrete slab for under the gate to
prevent the animal digging under it. I have had
one animal lift a gate off its hinges and find her
way back into the house in the middle of the
night. (She squeezed in through the cat flap).
It can give you a nasty fright when a 20kg animal
leaps on your bed at one o’clock in the morning
waking you from a deep sleep. It just happened
to be her first night out in her new enclosure and
she obviously wasn’t impressed. Thank goodness
she was a friendly animal and all she wanted was
to be in the warm with her “mum & dad”.
Internal Paraphernalia
Shelters
we have already discussed, but for food bowls we
have found a simple round galvanised dish similar
in shape to a large plant pot saucer is about the
most effective. They stay remarkably clean and
are easy to clean when necessary, they do not tip
easily, are very durable and are difficult for the
animals to destroy. (See figure 16).
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Figure 16
This picture shows the type
of food dish referred to in the text.
The animals in the picture are ‘Wombles’ a seventeen year old
female (on the left) and her son ‘Basil’ (six years old), who has now
sired three young of his own – one male, one female and one still
pouch bound, sex unknown. |
For water bowls, here again, we have found that
the most effective are enameled washbowls placed
inside a tyre. As with the food dishes, these
wash bowls are just about indestructible, very
easy to clean and the tyre stops the bowl being
emptied unintentionally. They also fit very
snugly into the centre of the tyre and often fit
so well as to make them difficult to remove.
(See figure 18).
Another good product to use as a water receptacle
is old 20 litre black polythene containers of some
sort. They are often used for things like
disinfectants, cleaning fluids etc and as they
have a handle on the top you can use this to hold
them in place and to stop them being tipped over.
(See figure 17). Cut them half being very
careful to preserve each half of the handle,
clean very very thoroughly, especially if you do
not know what they have contained and stake to the
ground
through
the handle hole. Make sure they are
black or white as these colours are UV stable and
will not degrade in the sunlight. They
can be lifted off the stake for cleaning purposes.
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Figure 17
Polythene container
cut in half and staked with a star dropper |
Figure 18
An enamelled bowl placed inside an old tyre |
I
said earlier that I do not like access gates in a
wombat enclosure but gates between enclosures are
a different matter (see figure 19).
These are useful if having to isolate
an animal for whatever reason.
They are made in the
fashion of a cat or dog flap that you might use in
you home except that they are hinged a little
above centre (to ensure that they always hang in
the vertical position) and incorporate a bar at
the top and bottom to be able to lock them off
when you do not want to allow access into or out
of each enclosure.
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Figure 19
Wombat gate showing the normally closed position and the centre hinge
which enables it to be locked off by sliding a bar through the posts on
opposite side of the gate at the top and bottom.
By doing this you can allow the door to swing one direction only if
so required. It
has worked very well for a number of years and our animals have no fear of
it. |
You
will have realised by now that I am addicted to
using treated pine (or Permapine if you like).
I like it because it is a very durable material;
it looks good and is aesthetically pleasing. I
have never had any problems with it even when used
for the construction of aviaries containing
parrots and cockatoos. Having said that, it
does have some down sides that need to be
watched. One is it’s ‘mobility’. It will
move and twist with differing weather conditions
so if you are using nails, staples or other fixing
materials of this type, you will find that in
time, (years rather than months), they will tend
to ‘work out’. Using nuts and bolts where you
can will solve this problem but that’s not always
possible or practical. For this reason you need
to keep an eye on it and make sure all your good
work is not going to come adrift at some point in
the future.
Another less concerning downside is that it tends
to age harden. After it has been out in all
weathers for a number of years it tends to become
brittle and the last of the negatives, at least as
far as I am concerned, is that it contains some
pretty horrible chemicals; so if you do
have critters that are likely to chew it, then
protect it from them or don’t use it. Note: If
when you buy your poles they are still wet with
the treatment be very careful how you handle it
and always wash your hands after working
with it, especially if you are going to eat. If
the timber is still very wet it is
probably a better idea to put the job on hold for
a while and let the timber dry out before you
start.
C. Enclosures for the Common Wombat
There
is not really a great deal to add
to what has gone
before except to say
that
these animals are very good climbers and for that
reason they would escaped from a wire sided
enclosure quicker that you
could say Vombatus ursinus.
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Figure 20
A Common wombat enclosure with a 1200mm high corrugated iron fence to the
left and a 900mm high one to the right which has a wire mesh ‘lean in’ at
the top. |
This
leaves us with a number of options.
You may wish to construct the enclosure using
something unclimbable like
standard fencing materials, brick or concrete,
whatever takes your fancy or whatever will
suit your location. No matter what
you decide, it must be higher than the
animal can reach standing on its
hind legs and
also be of a material that the animal can not
get a grip onto with its front paws.
For
example, if you look at figure 20, the animal that
was housed in this enclosure escaped (and was
recaptured) by climbing out at this corner before
the triangular piece of material was put in place
across the top (does not show too well in this
picture but is visible if you look carefully).
Unfortunately the animal concerned was big enough
to stand on the bottom rail of the fence on the
left and was able to reach the top of the fence to
the right and haul himself over.
If
you watch a common wombat using its front feet you
will see that they can actually hold things, as
you or I would, (but without the thumb of course)
which is something the hairy-nosed cannot do.
If a common wombat can reach the top of a fence
line, like the one illustrated at figure 20, with
its front feet, it has enough strength in its
forearms to be able haul itself up and over the
top.
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Figure 21
Another view of a common wombat enclosure showing two different types of
overhang. The
mesh side of this enclosure was to allow airflow within it; otherwise it
would have become a heat trap in summer
Note another example of my storm water gutter pipe over the feed shelter. |
Before
finishing up, there is perhaps one more type of
wombat enclosure (for either species) that I
should touch on and that is what I would call the
‘pit type’ or ‘concrete bunker’.
This
is basically a pit dug to the same size and shape
as the whole of the
enclosure, to a depth of 11/2m
(5ft) or so, which is then lined with concrete
around the sides and bottom and then back
filled. The animal(s) can then do their own
thing without fear of escape.
Personally I do not like this method as there are
too many pitfalls (if you’ll excuse the pun) and I
don’t believe, this type is conducive to breeding
this animal in captivity, which let’s face it, is
what we are trying to achieve
If
you do adopt this method, a great deal of
thought needs to be given to the floor of the
pit. Allow plenty of drain holes and make sure
it slopes in one direction preferably towards a
pre planned drain to one side of the pit otherwise
you will end up with a very muddy mess when it
rains, and a very unhappy animal. A way round
this problem is, of course, to cover the whole
thing with a roof of some sort; but why on earth
would you want to keep a wombat under cover for
the rest of its life. This really defeats the
whole purpose of the exercise. What we are
trying to do here is to create a captive situation
as close to the animals’ natural habitat as
possible. A good compromise would be to use a
very heavy galvanised reinforcing mesh for the
floor of the ‘pit’ A well made enclosure using
this method works very well but they are extremely
expensive to build properly and probably best left
to the “professionals”. They are generally not
suitable for you and me working on a limited
budget.
Perhaps before I close you will excuse me if I do
a bit of trumpet blowing and put in a plug for
myself. You may or may not be aware that the
Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus
latifrons) has, over the years, gained a
reputation for being somewhat difficult to breed
in captivity. At the time of writing, (April
2002), we have now bred ten (10), and three of
these have been sired by our first born. I
believe that our success is due to a number of
factors, not the least of which is that we live in
an area of natural wombat habitat (although at the
time, with our first success, this was not the
case). Other factors I consider play a part
are:-
a.
Large enclosures – the smallest enclosure is 30m x
9m and has since been extended;
b. The animals are allowed to dig their
own warren systems (although man made dens were
provided initially);
c. They are not overfed (they only get
fed three times a week)
And
so we come to the end of this diatribe. I hope
I haven’t bored you to death and as you can see
from this last chapter, it has been a bit biased
towards the wombat, for which I make no
apology. They are one of my favourite animals
and I tend to get a bit carried away when talking
about them. Also their housing requirements are
a little more complex than those of other
creatures we have discussed and therefore need a
lot more explanation.
Back to Part 4 |
