Please "Adopt" us for the Holidays

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Please consider the gift of life and hope to our rescued animals this holiday season!
Years ago I "adopted" a whale and the group that was protecting them sent me photos and updates, I really looked forward to hearing about where "my" whale had been seen, how far he had traveled. It was fun and I learned all about whales. Now we have blogs and internet to help us learn about wild animals and the joys of supporting such efforts :)

Adoption is a great option for those who would like to support our efforts...We have released 5 sloths to date and several this past year. Each sloth that comes into our program is here for a reason: an injury, abandoned, fell from a tree, fights, burns and mistreated by humans.

All of them have to be evaluated by our veterinarian, fed and cared for.

This can add up and we are looking for support for our various sloths.

I will give you some good news!! We have donations for Millie and Georgie enclosures, and will begin these in Jan. Thank you!!

Adoption certificates will be sent along with a photo of your favorite sloth,

Twili, Millie, Milo and Georgie. (I finally found a nice certificate-one that I can print up here...)

Eight years ago we began accepting toucans in need, and we have become known for the excellent work we do recovering these beautiful birds. We have had to say no to some animals, but we will never say no to the toucans. Currently we have 35 in our care. We are setting up a breeding program for release, and have been successful in reproducing the Emerald Toucanets.
Owl Fund! Please do an office pool, or a challenge for support, match the donation, for our 15 owls. We have to purchase from a poultry farm 700 chicks a month to feed them along with supplementing them with rats and mice that we breed here. Some of the most beautiful raptors in Costa Rica, and not many rescue centers accept these owls. We receive owl babies since they are very difficult to raise, and every adult owl that has come into the program has come with severe injuries that require extensive orthopedic surgeries and a long recovery process.

Many of you contributed to Isadora Spider monkey's enclosure and I can tell you that she is so happy and appreciative of her new space. Thank You!! She needs constant food since she is so High Energy, to put it frankly, she eats like a horse! Much of the fruit that we purchase weekly goes to her, little miss piggy. She is doing great and is a joy, loves to visit when we do tours and always shows off her acrobatic skills. Adopting Issy would help us keep up the fruit supply!

Jou Jou is just like Issy in a way, constant energy, totally recuperated and loves her new enclosure!


Pokey is back from the vet's, he lived with them for about a month...now you can imagine if your dog or cat stayed at the vets for that long, you would have a huge bill, well, we considered this a huge bill, but compared to the states, this is not costly at all. $120.00 for all his treatment, and as you can see he is doing so much better after his horrible infection from some animal attacking him. He is finally getting new quills and fur, but will probably have a bald backside :( We hope Quilla our beautiful girl will fall in love with him anyway. Pokey still needs medical treatment, so please consider adopting him!

Adopt an endangered Scarlet Macaw! Our macaws are at breeding age, and we are going to set them up for breeding for release. Young macaws will be placed with other release programs in the country. So, if you are a bird person, please help us support the 30 some parrots in our care! The seed mix and nuts that we feed, (along with fruits and vegetables) are imported, and anything imported is extremely expensive, We use a 23 kilo sack, around 50lbs per week, and this costs around $48, add in the nuts and we are up to $60.

300 pounds of Papaya per week, 20lbs of green beans and 25 lbs of carrots!

Farmers market fund! We can easily spend $150 per week on fresh fruits and vegetables for all the birds and animals.

Overwhelmed? I am, whew! I include all these figures so that folks have an understanding of what is involved in the day to day life at the Toucan Rescue Ranch. It's a constant influx of animals, food, bills, medicines, vet checks, operations, love and endless sleepless nights.

Please help us to keep up the momentum, continue to be able to rescue and care for Costa Rican wildlife, begin our breeding programs, continue our educational programs in the local schools and, I will end with a quote from a recent visitor, "I have been to other rescue centers around the world and this is one of the best. Their care for the animals is exquisite, the animals have space, enrichment and the place is sparkling clean."

Donations can be made to Pay Pal on our website, then please send us an e-mail to let us know who you would like to adopt, or what program your donation is helping.

Thank you from all of us, Leslie, Jorge and all the birds and animals of the Toucan Rescue Ranch and may you have a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and a great New Year.

In Loving Memory

A month ago in the nearby town of Santo Domingo a mother sloth wandered into a neighborhood with large trees and realized she was off course. Local children that sunday found the sloth and decided to have some "fun" with her and stoned the mother to death. A man was passing by and saw what the children had done, he saw the mother two toed sloth laying on the ground and on closer inspection found a little tiny baby sloth terrified, clinging to her dead mother.
She also had been hit in the eye, and her head was swollen. He wrapped her up in his shirt and took her home.

That night he tried to comfort her by feeding her some milk...not knowing how difficult baby sloths are to feed he tried his best. Unfortunately she probably swallowed wrong and some of that milk went into her lungs. Monday morning he started to call different zoos and rescue centers and was rejected time after time...he then called the Minaet office of Heredia and told them: "if you don't come pick up this baby I am calling in channel 7" the local news. Fortunately they had a car that was working that day, and had gasoline (which is always a problem)..they went to pick up the baby sloth, wrapping her in their shirts to keep her warm and drove the short distance to The Toucan Rescue Ranch to leave her in our care.

As many of you know, we have raised 3 sloths successfully, little Georgie only weighed 400grams when he came in. Our guests named the little one Lily, and she weighed only 250 grams. Quite a challenge, but I was up to the task. Goats milk, feedings every 3 hours around the clock, constant checking of temperature and our little one was coming along.
She was very difficult to feed at first, and took about a week to get the hang of sucking on the syringe. Our vet Janet came up and confirmed what I was hearing in her lungs...trouble. We both suspected it was from milk she had inhaled while with the kind man who tried to feed her. Cough syrup was now a staple on her milk menu. A bad bought of loose stools from the cows milk one day, many days inbetween, and finally she was normalizing her bodily functions.

By week two she was gaining weight, her swollen eye was healing, but with a large cataract leaving her blind in that eye...but she was doing really well. We all sighed from relief and were very hopeful....but the lungs continued.
Another trip up from the vet, and still the same reaction...strange sounds in the lungs, but other than that all was well.

Week three came around and she started to reject food, and not gain weight. She was fussing and lethargic. Then she would be back on track and another day down. By the end of the week, Janet and I were both concerned...she came up at 8pm to see her one night, and by the 2 am feeding little Lily had totally collapsed. Once again I called Janet to come up, which she did, and took her back to her clinic for IV fluids. Having a vet that will come up at all hours day or night is a blessing....but that morning Lily passed away.

When I first started rescuing animals it was very difficult when one would die and I would not want to do a necropsy, however since then and in this case especially a necropsy was exactly what we needed. Janet found out that Lily only had one lung that was functioning, maybe from pneumonia when she was born...not sure, but because of that, her heart was working overtime and since she was growing her heart could not keep up and she died of heart failure. Totally natural and nothing we could of done to prevent it. I could put all the pieces of the puzzle together and realize just what had happened to her and it all made sense, as difficult as it was to accept her death.

I had a large tour coming in that morning, and had to focus on the other animals. I used to take Lily on walks around the property all wrapped up in her blankets. I took the walk alone that day, and have been avoiding writing about this, until my friend encouraged me to write her story. We are working with Minaet education and possibly Lincoln school to do an educational program about sloths and wildlife in the local schools in Santo Domingo. This will be very valuable and hopefully educational for the children. Milo and Millie will be great ambassadors for their species.

I find comfort knowing that Lily died warm and loved, not on the cold forest floor, or by the stones that killed her mother. As I write I am sitting next to the young keel billed toucans who are constantly begging for my attention to feed them....I allow myself time to think and miss Lily, but the little toucans need to be fed, the adult toucan that has been ill needs to be checked, guests are arriving, the macaws need more perches in their cage, the sloths need to be fed, supplies need to be ordered for Isadora the monkey's cage and the circle of life goes on at the Toucan Rescue Ranch.

We are setting up a "Lily fund" in honor of her to start fund raising for our Sloth Enclosure, and education program. Donations can be made via Pay Pal on our website, http://www.toucanrescueranch.com/. I am very very happy to report that with all your kind donations we are ready to build Isadora the monkey her large habitat, and Jou-Jou the kinkajou her new palace. Thank you so much, from all of us here at The Toucan Rescue Ranch.

Progress with young rescued toucans

About a month ago, these three young toucans were decommissioned from Minae, our Fish and Wildlife, they had recently been stolen from the nest and were being kept poorly in small canary cages...yes, canary cages. One had a very badly bruised wing and on the same side she could not use her leg and foot. With treatment she is now recovering the use of her wing and using her leg and foot! We still have her in a smaller cage so that she does not re-injure the leg, the other two are out in nice large enclosures and are doing really well. Two of them are Swainson's or Chesnut mandibled toucans and the other is a Keel Billed toucan. You can see the pale colors are turning nice and bright and they have gained much needed weight, you could see and feel most of their bones when they arrived.

My husband Jorge is over on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, about a 1.5 hour drive away picking up 150 lbs. of Papaya to feed all the toucans and parrots, and of course Issy the monkey. He goes over to our farm, then on to the papaya plantation! Please help us support these guys with a donation using Pay Pal on our website!! http://www.toucanrescueranch.com/

Thank you so much!

Georgie 9 months!

Georgie is 9 months old! He is a rescued two-toed sloth that has been here since he was about 1 week old. He is growing up, getting bigger and doing great. He is a fearless climber! We have nick-named him King Kong at night, since that is when he is more awake and quite a handful.

He is still on his goats milk formula with solid foods as well, and this is how I start and end each day, feeding Georgie.