*Enrichment*

Dear readers.

Animal enrichment is part of our syllabus and course for this year. Before this year we helped the other 2nd years with their projects but never really understood the meaning and purpose of it. Enrichment is by definition the fighting of boredom. This is where you use a way to get the animal to not be bored in the enclosure the whole day either by interacting and playing or changing things like feeding methods or even just by creating its natural habitat in the enclosure that it will be staying in for the certain time frame.

In the next couple of photos I will show you a few different ways of enrichment and how you can implement it with the animals we have at the centre.

In this picture I took a pine cone from the shop at reception and I stuffed it with mince and fruit pieces to force Rosie the mongoose to search and dig for her food like they would have done in the wild. She loved the opportunity to use her paws seeing that the one is handy capped. This will not be implemented with every meal because we do not want her to get used to the implementation.

 Here I am implementing the enrichment program with Scarlet so she can be trained to take the food at the back of the enclosure to enable us to place the bowl with the rest of the food in the enclosure safely.

 When she is distracted we are able to place the rest of the food in the enclosure without any injuries or her attacking us.

In this picture I am in the enclosure with Lex and |Codee and we are just giving them some attention so the still get to interact with us and know our scents. They love when we come inside with new students for them to play with!

 In these 2 pictures I am interacting with Trigger the cheetah at the centre, he is a very sweet character and he loves purring whilst watching the world like nothing matters.

Animal injuries

Dear readers.

The past couple of weeks have been sort of hectic considering the different activities we have had at the centre. Amongst those activities here are the injuries and medical attention we had to take care of and distribute:

1. Firstly the Nyala's that we have been keeping in the boma had to be darted and released on the farm so they could breed with the others and bring new genes to the gene pool.
2. We had an Eland ewe that lost the half of her jaw due to unknown reasons and she was pregnant. We had to dart her and her with the birth of the baby. She was so severely hurt that she had to be euthanized and due to the premature birth the baby unfortunately did not make it either.
3. The 3rd picture is that of Alley with her drained apses. She has broken teeth and by eating she gives the open spaces the bacteria needed to form an apses. The teeth that are broken are luckily the milk teeth so as soon as they fall out and the new ones grow the problem will be solved.
4. This Nyala was part of the game capturing on another farm and as he jumped the net, he got caught and broke his leg but in such a way that it had to be pushed back in to place and it needed a cask but unfortunately after hours of struggle he had to be euthanized because it could not be done.
5. And last but not least, here are a couple of pictures of the burnt animals we had to treat and take care of as good as we possibly could.



In this picture Karen is prepping for the darting so we can tag the Nyala's and set them free on the farm.

The baby that they had to help by applying a c section.

 The apses after it has been drained.

 The broken hind leg of the Nyala bull.

A large spotted Genet that had damage to his eyes and ears and could not be treated.

An Nyala ewe that was treated by the vet from town and put on a drip for her body to rehydrate. She unfortunately was so severely injured that she did not make it.

Gracie, the duiker that stole every ones hearts. She has 4 hooves burnt and bandaged but they are looking good and she is doing very well with everyone visiting her.



B@rley project*

Dear readers.

The barley grains that I have bought from the supplier in Benoni have been planted alongside the aviary and they are doing very well. I first tried to germinate them in a plastic bowl with water and sunlight but it did not work as well as it was supposed to. I asked for worm water from Adrian and he gave me 25L and I have been using it for the seeds that I have planted in the soil.

The seeds in the plastic container. I tried to germinate them but they did not in the circumstances provided.

The first years that helped me to prepare the soil and plant the seeds.

The first growth after 3 days

The length and amount of grass after 8 days of worm water and normal water every day.



This is Peanut enjoying the green grass.



Game capture at Sondela

Dear readers.

As it is just after winter and the veld is still looking dull, Sondela has a game capture week every year round this time to accommodate the carrying capacity of the veld. The old dry grass will die out and put back nutrients in the soil so that the new green grass can use it and grow to provide food for the summer. But this won't be possible if the animal population is too big for the veld to carry thus the game capture. By catching the game we teach the first years how to do mass capture and we get the extra experience of medications and chemical capture that we did not get last year.

The animals captured then gets transported to the companies that bought them and then Sondela gets the money for them. This system has worked now for a couple of years but there have come times that they had to catch for more then one week due to unforeseen circumstances which throws around the planning for the other activities. We had a lot of fun helping to catch the game and it was interesting to see how fast some students can run when they stress out and adrenaline kicks in!



This is the view from the top of the transporting truck

 

In this picture we need to hit the poles into the ground for our camoflage to be ready for the capture

 



this is the post we stood at and we pulled the curtains closed from here.




 

These are some of the animals we caught in the truck waiting to be transported.

Newest family members

Dear readers.

At the wildlife centre we do not only take care of the animals that are here and that newly arrive for care, but we accept them into a family of care takers and animals that have formed a bond of trust. We have two new members with us that have arrived recently and one of them being a first for the centre:

Baby Eland

He does not have a name yet but he is a young strong male from another farm that could not care for his needs like our establishment can. He is not tame so it took some time for us to get a way of feeding the young guy seeing that he could severely hurt you if he felt the need to. He got used to the way we walk into the enclosure very slowly and how we just stand there with the bottle of milk stretched out to him. Eventually he got hungry enough to start getting closer by himself. He now walks up to you when you are in a halt and he sucks the teat finishing all his milk. He is becoming quite the young bull and who knows, maby one day he will even let us touch him.

Mongoose

The other newly arrived animal is much smaller and loves to make a lot of noise. She is a juvenile mongoose female with a handy capped front and back paw. She has been hand raised and the people that raised her felt that she needed a better life and so they brought her to the wildlife centre. She is a very sweet character and she loves the attention that we can provide her. She is taken to sleep inside during the night and she loves to eat meat and fruit pieces. Her name is Rosie and if she will be released on the farm one day is still undecided due to her physical disability.

(Wild one)

Dear readers.

Getting back to work after an off weekend is tough but not when you have the friendly animals of the centre to come back to. Comming back also means we have to get used to any newly arrived animals and this past weekend was a parturition weekend. The farmyard kept sending us baby goats and sheep as soon as they were born because at one stage the baby is deformed and then the mother keeps rejecting the little one.

We need to make sure the babies get collostrum and we need to make sure that they are warm and comfortable with a mother or companion with them in the enclosure. In other news we have 2 new volenteers that have arrived and they have been a big help. They help in daily activities and sit and play with the babies so they can get used to human contact. We now have Ocean from France, Audri from France and a vet student from town that came to help us because the practice is quiet today.

Scarlet our baby caracal.

Choppie, the lamb found in the freestate

Appollo, our serval kitten and companion to Scarlet.

Feeding the kid goat on night shift.

The mother goats in the outside boma

The cats are getting very big and today we received an Nyala bull carcass that was dead at mosselleselle tent camp. We needed the meat and this profound event just happened to save us for another couple of days. The 1st year students are busy with the body and the centre is doing very well with boskos orders as ssb keeps asking for more packages. We also have a newly arrived Oryx once again and she is a couple of days old which means there is a good chance that she received collostrum from her mother and will survive. 

The run over hare we found this morning, used as feed.

$Barley grain$

Dear readers,

As 2nd years we get a lot of projects during the year that forms part of our course and at the moment we are busy researching a food culture we can use at the wildlife centre for our animals. My culture that I chose is specifically aimed on the feeding of herbivores and can also be used as enrichment for the cat species in their enclosures.

Barley grain is an organic grass that grows all year round and has no waste product after use. It can be fed to various types of species and is filled with nutrients and minerals. I want to grow this grass at the wildlife centre for feeding purposes and to enhance the aestethic value of the centre because at the moment we have a lot of open space covered in sand and dead leaves.

This grass will give us the oppertunity to beautify the centre, feed the animals organically and it will help enrich enclosures which will make them visitor friendly. At the moment I am busy with the research on how to grow it the best possible way at the centre and my research must be in the form of a presentation so I can present it to the manager for approval. I am very excited about this project and so I went to the supplier to check out the ways of growing the grass.

They have created a way of growing it with the least effort needed, they created a harvesting house that gives the seeds a place to grow and provides UV light and water which is all the seeds need to grow. The growth period in one of these houses is 6 days then you can take out the whole sheet and feed it leaving no waste products. When taking out a sheet you just replace it again with a new one so it can start to germinate which happens in 24 hours!

These are the seeds in the trays in which they grow inside the harvesting house.

This is what the seed looks like after one day, this is a germinating seed.

This is the harvesting house when opened with the UV light and irregation system it needs to help the seeds grow.

This is your end product after 6 days of growing and this sheet can be fed just like this to various animals such as sheep, goat, horses and herbivorous wildlife.

*New born weekend*

Dear readers.

This weekend we were quite busy and had a few new arrivals. First we had a couple of baby chicks come in that needed yo be kept warm under the red light and they had to be fed and given water. These chick were bestowed upon the 1st years to take care of for the weekend as they are easy and they just need to be checked through the day.

Our second new arrival was a little lamb with a deformed hind leg. They brought it in with the mother so it could still drink from her and get the needed collostrum from her to survive. All we had to make sure of was that he was able to get to the teat which is difficult when he can not support himself to stand up yet. We helped him the first couple of times and now he is strong enough to drink from her himself. He is doing great and I hope to see him in the farmyard in the near future.

And then finally our last new arrival came in the day after he was born and he needed dextrose and collostrum to put the strength back immediately. This was a little waterbuck from a game capturing company and we had to make sure he was kept warm at all times because he could get pnemonia if cold.

Workplace dinamics*

Dear readers.

This morning I conducted the feeding tour and I had help from Esther, one of our new first years. She is very different from the rest of the bursary students in the way that she has much more confidence to ask questions and reflect on what she has learn’t.

We then cleaned up the clinic and had spot checks done before I had a class with them on animal care. I conducted the class with them and went through their workbooks with them so they could ask questions and so they could make sure they understand the terms and theory. Our class was cut short because there was an OHS meeting scheduled in the class room so we then carried on with the milk feeds and meat feeds for the afternoon.

After lunch we had what we call a bonus function where we get to have some fun as a family and we get to see the praise the managers give to their staff members. We broke up into color coded teams and had to create a song and war cry to present and perform to the rest of the staff and students. We had a lot of fun laughing and making mistakes but I think that is what the goal is with this activity. To let your staff know that you need to work together to make things happen and to have some fun every once in a while.

This helps ease up tension and it makes you think out of the box when you are put on the spot like that. Earlier this year we had a similar exercise but we had a sports day where everyone had a color shirt and could take part in some sport activities. This showed me that there are a lot of people with way more talents then the ones they use to perform a job in the workplace. To have fun and laugh together brings us closer and strengthens the bond that we need to make Sondela a better place.

The teams that did the best war cry, the best song and had the most culture won some cold drinks just before we could all have some complimentary food that the kitchen provided us.

*Oryx Gizelle*

Dear readers.

So we have a new arrival and it is a Gemsbokkie. She is about 2 days of age now and she has a broken hind leg in a cask. She reminds me so much of Zena when she was a younger baby and interested me in some facts about the species.

• They have a life expectancy of 20 years and the gestation period is 9 months, the same as a human.

• The male and females are difficult to tell apart as both have horns, but there are vague differences in the characteristics of the horns. These horns were used by boesman as spear tips in the olden days.

• They can go without water fpr long periods of time and because of this adaptation they can live in areas most other animals cant because of the lack of water.

• They are group animals but will split the group when there is a couple in need of water.

• The males are territorial and will crouch low depositing the dung on the ground withouth it making a scatter so the smell can be kept for a longer period of time.

Now for the timeline of Zena, our own little \gemsbok:

In this picture Zena was still very young and weak so we had to help her get her movements right for daily walking and excersize.





Here you can see that Gemsbok start getting their horns at a very young age. This is so they can fend of predators and the elder Gemsbok when they need to and the markings on the face will become more clear with the first couple of weeks.



The horns are constantly growing and in this picture you can see the markings on the face is starting to become more defined and making use of black and white.



This is the newest picture I have of her but her horns have grown twice as long and she even stole the heart of our own Bizmark, the springbok. We hope to release her as soon as she is old enough so she can create her own family with the other gemsbok we have on Sondela.



EFAF: Our elephant adventure*

Dear readers.

Today we had the incredible oppertunity to interact with elephants. We went to Zebula where they train these elephants so people can work with them and ride on them taking a safari through the bushveld. They also go swimming in Summer and play soccer!

We were introduced to the elephants one by one and they each have a unique trademark, be it the trick they do or the personality they have. Our first encounter was with a bull and he showed us that they kan slurp up 7L of water at a time when they are his age but they drink 250L a day. He gave us the chance to sit on his leg and touch him so we could feel how course his skin is.

We fed them boskos and they also had some hay and lucern to eat whils the guides explained to us where they come from and what they can do. We then played a game where the guide told the elephant the names of four people and gave him the chance to smell the person whilst he repeats the name 4 times. Then he gives the elephant a hat to give to the person with the name he calls out. They have an amazing ability to remember things and he even handed the shoes we placed infront of him to the correct owners showing that they have very good sense of smell.

They can do things like turn around, lift their feet and shake their heads on command. They can play soccer by kicking the ball back and forth and spray the guests when the guides tell them to. But here is the sad part... One female had played with a cable lying loose in the veld and got strangled. When she tried to get loose she tore open her trunk and now she has a hole in the middle. They had vets from onderste poort come and stitch it up but she kept taking the stitches out so now she has found a unique way to close up the whole when drinking water, she slurps it up and then twists her trunk so the hole closes up just in time for her to spray it into her mouth. Elephants can not breathe through their mouths and can not swallow through their trunks.

We now have the oppertunity to create a slideshow on the pro's and cons of elephant training and then we will have a debate on the two sides of the situation. In the end everyone will have their own meaning on this but now this debate will be assessed and used in our portfolios. Wish us luck!

This was a friendly little meercat that came to say hi on our visit. His name is Ratti and he is the local resident taking care of the elephants*