GIGHA´S PUP - MARA Gigha gave birth on Sunday 29th July 2001 to a healthy female pup. We named her 'Mara' (Gaelic for sea). The sex of the new pup was a mystery to begin with. However after a few days of keeping our distance to allow the mother and pup time to bond, we were able to get close enough to see the pup was female. In the first few weeks Mara was feeding from Gigha every 4 hours and had reached 29.5kg by 30th of August 2001. As soon as possible we wanted to get Mara into the wild where she would instinctively start feeding on small fish and crabs. Unlike abandoned pups the staff do not intervene with pups that are born at the centre because there is absolutely no need. The mother feeds her pup as she would in the wild and pups grow at a phenomenal rate (approx. a kilo a day). When the pup is a month old the feeding tails off and we normally observe the mother showing less interest in her pup. ***MARA IS RELEASED***

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