SLIDESHOW: Tilly bags a home

AN orphaned baby wallaby has a new home in the shape of a rucksack at Whipsnade Zoo.

Tilly the wallaby is being hand-reared by keepers after she was found out of her mum’s pouch a month ago.

Keeper Jo Shirley now carries her around in the substitute pouch wherever she goes, just as her real mum would.

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Jo said: “Tilly is still spending most of the day snuggled up in her rucksack with a blanket, where she’s warm and safe, but has started to become more adventurous, hopping about and venturing out a bit more.”

The seven-month-old Bennett’s wallaby, who would have been a little larger than a baked bean at birth, needed bottle feeding special milk and vitamin supplements around the clock when she was first found.

Jo said: “Feeding Tilly every three hours was exhausting but she needed feeding little and often to build her strength up. Now she’s bigger she only needs feeding around four times a day and is doing really well. She’s progressed to eating solids including hawthorn, beech and dandelion.”

Tilly will treat the rucksack as home for the next few months before going to live on the zoo’s Children’s Farm where she will join three other hand-reared wallabies. Whipsnade has around 300 wallabies which have access to much of the park’s 600 acres, and can be seen all over the zoo.