Around this time of year we get a lot of pumpkins donated to us. These unused pumpkins are given to us by some of our members or sometimes from local farms that have no use for them anymore. We will generally give these pumpkins to some of our animals for enrichment. As you can see from the pictures below, some animals like to eat them and some just like to stare at them. Have a great holiday!Read more
Posts filed in: Farmyard
Missing Ozzie
On Wednesday, we made the decision to euthanize Ozzie, our Royal Palm turkey, who lived in the farmyard. He had been sick for a long time, and seemed to defy the odds on a daily basis. Up until this past week, he was his usual ornery self, even through what we strongly suspected was cancer. Late last week he started limping, and eventually went lame, and didn’t respond at all to the treatments for pain we were giving him. AsRead more
Lightning training update
Well it looks like our newest keeper, Sarah, has officially become Lightning’s new primary trainer! The three of us (Sarah, Lightning and I) took several walks together over the last few weeks to get her transitioned and for Lightning to learn that she is now one of his trainers. Lightning has made great strides with his behaviors recently, including doing things that he would never do before. One of these things is walking over unfamiliar objects or substrates. For instance,Read more
Big Word of the Month: Fimicolous
My wife Sandy, also a lover of big science words, passed along this month’s feature. Fimicolous is an adjective formed from Latin roots that mean “to inhabit dung” and is used to describe organisms that live in, on, and with animal waste. As animal keepers we spend a lot of time dealing with poop and you might be amazed at all the living things that utilize poop. Perhaps most famous are the dung beetles, a group of scarab beetles thatRead more
Minor surgery for Chummix Goat
Chummix Goat is fine- really. Keepers noticed a few weeks ago a mass under is armpit. It didn’t drain like it was an abscess from one of his vaccines. So, we scheduled an early morning time for Dr. Cannedy to come to remove the mass and send it off for testing so we can learn that everything is well with our big noisy goat. Below are photos from this morning’s procedure. Chummix is up and about and eating and actingRead more
QuikPost: Personal Ad
Single white and brown male with more to love seeking someone to play footsie with.Read more