Every so often one of our carers has a wallaby joey that goes blind. They develop cataracts and go blind quite suddenly. We don't fully understand what causes this but there are lots of theories. It in general seems to be those joeys that have had a very traumatic life. (ie the ones that were orphaned very young (pinkies), were injured (broken bones), dehydrated and gotten sick(diarrhoea etc)) It may well be something that we is not being met in terms of their nutrition or developmental needs as it seems to only occur in captivity but seems to happen very very sporadically. One theory is that joeys get too much oxygen by not being in their mothers pouch. So think it may be a virus and we have been looking for one but so far no success. It is a central blindness as well as cataracts so if you remove the cataracts they stay blind.
However they cope extremely well provided they are released into a predator free area (no dogs!) and with lots of other wallabies. They become very able at listening for the sounds of the other wallabies and very soon its hard to remember they are blind. They can breed and raise healthy seeing offspring.
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