
The female Echidna lays a single egg into her rudimentary pouch, about 10 days later the very tiny baby echidna hatches from the egg. It is about the size of a jelly bean and weighs approximately half a gram. The baby Echidna is called a Puggle and it suckles milk secreted from the specialised pores of the mammary glands inside mum’s temporary pouch. The Puggle is carried in the pouch until spines start to appear at around 50 days old, at which stage the Puggle is left in a deep burrow constructed by mum.
Little Jugoon has just started to grow her spines and likely would still have been in mums pouch, had she been in a burrow it is highly unlikely that she would have made her way out. We can only assume that something happened and mum has somehow dropped Jugoon.
The following day Jugoon was brought to Alstonville vet surgery by her WIRES volunteer carer Leoni. Jugoon was anesthetized and her foot injury was examined and treated by Dr Mike.

