An animal-loving family have adopted an orphaned baby deer – and are now hand-rearing her in the living room of their bungalow.
Little roe deer Fern was discovered cold and wet at a roadside after being separated from her mother just over a month ago.
The couple who found her informed Maxine Scott, 60, who runs Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre near Comrie.
Maxine, who has previous experience of bringing up wild animals, is now tending to the animal in her own living room as she needs a lot of care.
She is hand-feeding Fern amid hopes that she will grow stronger and be able to venture back into the wild in the coming months.
Maxine said: “Fern was found cold and wet at a roadside and I got a phone call from the couple who found her.
“We think her mother was probably killed on the road, but we will never know. She was going to die without intervention.
“I brought her home and she needed special care so I normally keep them in the house to feed them up.
“I think she is about six weeks old now and we’ve been hand-rearing her for about four to five weeks.
“She just stays in the living room in the farmhouse where I live with my family.
“She has a pet box – it’s like a large pet carrier. I have tried to put her outside several times into an enclosure but she is too timid and she freaks out.
“She will interact with me and she likes getting scratched. But she’s scared of other people. It’s a natural instinct.
“We will let her go out in her own time.”
Fern is still being bottle-fed with warm lamb’s milk and is slowly starting to venture out into Maxine’s garden.
Maxine added: “I would hope that by the time she is three to four months old that she might go out into the wild.”
Maxine has previously raised lambs, a Highland calf, monkeys, hedgehogs, wallaby babies and “anything that needs hand-rearing” in her home.
