Episode: "Amazing Aussie Ops"
Location: Adelaide Zoo, Australia
Veterinarian: Dr. David Schultz

The brush-tailed rock wallaby is a rare, endangered species of macropod — a family of marsupials that includes the kangaroo. There are very few remaining wild colonies left.

Australia's Adelaide Zoo has established an effective captive breeding program with its very healthy captive population of brush-tailed rock wallabies. The program, called "cross fostering," simply utilizes a surrogate mother from a compatible species to rear the joey.

Under the guidance of Dr. David Schultz, female brush-tailed rock wallabies with newborn joeys are selected and anesthetized.

The newborn joey, about the size of a human thumb, is physically — and very carefully — removed from its mother's teat inside the pouch. It is then immediately placed on the waiting teat of the anesthetized surrogate mother — a yellow-footed rock wallaby.

The yellow-footed surrogate mother is returned to her colony enclosure, where she will raise the brush-tailed joey as her own.

The brush-tailed mother is returned to her colony enclosure and will soon come into season — usually three times a month — and breed again to produce new offspring for cross fostering.

The wild, captive-bred brush-tailed rock wallabies are then reintroduced to the wild.

Adelaide Zoo's veterinarians are some of the world's leading experts in this type of technique.

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