Well, not for all goats, just Chummix. According to Dr. Cannedy Chummix is sick, with “old goat disease”. Chummix is watched closely, and has been for some time now. About six months or so ago Chummix lost a lot of weight. He was checked for all the typical diseases, and Dr. Cannedy has seen him three or four times since then. Chummix still eats and does his usual activities… he’s just old. Chummix is currently a shadow of what he used to be, and looks likeRead more
Posts filed in: Health/Vet
What do the bears eat?
Bear food for one day Here is the Bear food for one day. 12 apples 6 oranges 12 carrots 6 pears 6 cups of nuts 12.5 lbs of chow (missing from pic) The bears always get apples and oranges. Every other day they get either carrots or cooked sweet potatoes. Their extra fruit/vegetable (which is pears in this pic) varies each day between pears, avacados, berries, peaches or plums, heads of lettuce, grapes or raisins, and corn on the cob. EachRead more
Forget the porridge, give me cotton candy!
Every Thursday the animal department staff (along with any volunteers or museum staff that can tolerate the keepers) go to lunch together somewhere off campus. Occasionally we splurge and go to Golden Corral. A few weeks ago some of the keepers noticed there was blue cotton candy in the dessert section. We decided to take all the cotton candy they had (of course, we waited until we were on our way out to snag it all) so that we could seeRead more
Another visit from Dr. English
Dr. English was in last Thursday to check on the eyes of 11 of our animals. He looked at our four barred owls and two screech owls, the donkey, Ladybelle ferret, Baby salamander, Lycus the ring tailed lemur, and Bugsy rabbit. He comes by every year (see some photos from his visit last year). Here are a couple photos from this year’s visit (with help from another veterinarian and his tech Rachel too). Read more
Training Progress
I posted in March about my progress training the Ring Tailed Lemurs. At that point they were staying in their crate for about 4 minutes on average. I’ve worked up to about 10 minutes, including taking them right outside of the lemur house. Yay! But here is where it gets tricky- we spoke with our vet about giving them one or two treats the morning of their physicals. Since the lemurs have to be sedated, she does not want themRead more
A bowl full of mashed chow and banana…
…Helps the medicine go down! Keeper Jill wrote a post “Time for your medicine” about all the tricks we use to get animals to take their medicine. She posted pictures of the Red Ruffed Lemurs taking some meds. The Ring Tailed Lemurs aren’t so easy! But I found a very easy mix of mashed lemur chow and banana that seems to mask their dewormer enough for them to eat it. Cross your fingers and hope they eat it all Read more