Kitties and Puppies

Some exciting things have happened in the last few days. On Wednesday I worked in the Cheetah department as I do every Wednesday for cross-training purposes. It was an average day in cheetah land. Let cats out in drive-thru, let tigers out, med cats, put cats away, pick up pens, prepare diets, feed, and put up tigers. Of course it is a bit more involved than that but that but you get the idea.

Sanurra and Ellie in the drive-thru for the morning

Liz and Cubbies

 However we had a nice break in the day when we went to set up our brand new scale. Our local AZAK chapter saved up the money and purchased this scale for Safari so we could weigh our animals in the field and not only during their physicals (during which they must be anesthetized). This scale is really great too because it weighs up to 1000lbs allowing us to weigh all the animals in the Village, Carnivore, Cheetah departments, and many in the Ungulate department. We got this scale set up and tested it and learned we had to calibrate it. To do that we had to have at least 50lbs and we had to know the exact weight. Fortunately the Village department has a smaller scale so we were able to gather enough items to equal 50lbs, and then 100lbs for the second calibration point. After it was calibrated we got to take it out and put it to the test in the field. We weighed Liz (85lbs) and her two cubs (35 and 31.5lbs), Sanurra, and Taini. Liz and the cubs did great walking right up on the scale to be weighed. They have been doing regular training with them so they are used to coming up to the fence to get some meat chunks. Sanurra and Taini, our two hand raised cats, are easier because we can just go into the pen with them and have them sit on the scale. We will slowly be able to work through to get regular weights on all the cheetahs.

Chimba getting weighed

Lizzie

Switching them around

 The next day I had a bit of a surprise when I went out to my car. It was snowing!! For those of you who don't know snow is pretty rare around here and when it does snow it does not sick much. Being from New England the lack of snow is something new to me, but I got a little taste of home yesterday. I made Tau and Sarabi a small snowman on top of their shade structure in the pen. Of course they knocked it down as soon as they got in there. Here you can see them out in the snow :)

Sarabi climbing in the snow

Checking the snowman

After letting these guys out I actually didn't spend too much time dealing with them because I spent the day shadowing our butcher. J is the one who takes in our animal donations, puts them down, and butchers them. We then cut the meat down into diet sized portions twice a week. However we all need to be able to do J's job in case he is out. I saw the process once before but it was really good to be able to follow J and help him through the whole thing from start to finish. I learned a lot, but I won't be able to do this on my own until I have seen it a few more times. Some of you may dislike the idea that we take in animal donations so I just want to remind you we only take in animals that need to be put down. Also this is the best possible diet we can feed to our animals. Many zoos feed a processed meat which meets all nutritional requirements but it tends to be higher in fat content that feeding whole carcass. Fat is particularly difficult for cheetahs to process and even feeding out carcass meat we have to cut all fat off for them. We also feed out the organs and heads of the animals and these are really healthy for the cats as well. And by giving them meat on the bone it provides extra enrichment for them because it gives them something to work on throughout the night.

After I was done helping J and had taken my lunch I took Ellie for walk. We went for a good hike up along the fire service road that goes behind the park.

The trail we were on, its a tough hike!

Above Safari

Taking  a break

I also want to add in that while I was walking Ellie Sarah and Valerie (Carnivore supervisor and lead keeper) tried to get weights on our lions with the new scale. This did not go as well as hoped. The scale is just short enough the lions will only get halfway on it. We are going to try to build a frame to help hold them in that area. It is big enough for them to sit on, its just they don't want to get up to sit on it when there is plenty of room around it. I will let you all know how this goes once we have a frame for it. I went around and closed all the gates in the park after I put Ellie away.

Just a quick word about today. We spent most of our day preparing for and then shooting a commercial for the new tug of war encounter. While we were shooting for that we also had two local news stations, KPIC and KEZI, and the newspaper, come down to cover this. I will let you know more about this and share the news links tomorrow.