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
Posts tagged: #farmyard
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
An easy way to lose weight fast!
I know it sounds like an infomercial that you would see on TV late at night when you can’t sleep, but it’s not. Unlike those television gimmicks, this method actually has guaranteed results, and doesn’t require any bulky machines that have to get shipped to your house. The unfortunate part about this sure-fire weight loss plan is… It’s only for sheep. You may have guessed what I’m talking about by looking at our freshly sheared wooly friends in the picture below. Yes, that’sRead more
QuikPost: A new farmyard addition
Christopher the barred owl has finally been moved to his new farmyard exhibit! He’s been behind the scenes while his new home was being built next to Max the steer and Chummix the goat. The enclosure turned out really nicely, and you can see on the far left where Christopher has a sheltered area to go along with all of the open sunny space, as well. Go say hello to Christopher on your next visit through the farmyard.Read more