Zimbabwe Seven

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 28 2009 | By: zimbabwe7

Dear Readers,

Well it seems like we have been quiet for the past few weeks, over the Christmas and New Year period, but believe us, it has not been restful! In the wonderful world of wildlife, there is no such thing as a holiday……….. Animals are really not bothered whether the 25th December is a public holiday or not…….

7th January 2009 was an interesting start to the year. We performed two contraceptive implants in two of our animals: Francis the female civet received a suprelorlin implant as well as Burma, our youngest female African wild cat.

The procedure was performed by Drs. C. Foggin and M. Peacock of the Wildlife Veterinary Unit.

To our knowledge, and to the knowledge of the company that produces the implants (Peptech P/L), these have never been used in African civet before.

At this point some of you readers may well be asking what a breeding centre is doing putting contraceptive implants in their animals??

As always there is method in the madness – and we will explain to you in each case:

Francis has had issues since her arrival at the Trust, as a young, tailless and very mixed up little civet. Her sense of abandonment was extreme and we had to spend a long time building trust with her. It has taken over 16 months to get Francis into a position where she now feels reasonably safe in her environment and so the next step is to integrate her with one of the males. Since she is still a bit sensitive, we would like her to get to know one the boys without the potential of breeding just yet as this could be too much to handle. For this reason, we decided to try a deslorelin implant, which has been successfully used in most felids. Francis has chosen Assisi as her new friend and he is more than willing to make her acquaintance, although they already know each other well through the fence between enclosures.

 

We do not know for definite yet whether this form of contraception will work in a civet, neither for how long. In felids the implant may last for up to 12 months, so we will monitor Francis closely to this end.

 

Burma was a straightforward case of temporary contraception, as she is about to be integrated with the youngest male wild cat, Versailles. We want them to bond without reproducing; so that by the time it comes to move them on to the Marula release site they are already paired. We plan for their movement to a release site in March, circumstances willing.

Above is a photo with Burma and the pulse oximeter sensor on her tongue!

At the same time that we did the implants in the two girls, we took the opportunity to knock Hasha, our elderly aardwolf out so that we could give here a thorough physical. Hasha was given a light morning cocktail of dormicum to make her relaxed enough for the next stage of her knock down. Chris Foggin expertly placed a dart in her rump and before long we were brushing and grooming Hasha and giving everything a thorough check. Her teeth are quite worn – which is to be expected for a 17 year old aardwolf. We are pleased to report that she is otherwise in fine health, although perhaps a little underweight in the hindquarters. We will subsequently supplement her diet with a bowl of pronutro at lunch time just to firm her up.

Other news – the bat eared foxes are growing daily. It has been a wonderful privilege to be part of this special time of them growing up; their individual characters are coming through now. Their coats are changing and not surprisingly – their ears are growing! At this stage the boys appear to have slightly longer ears than their sister.

We have had more hedgehogs born! This seems to be a headline for every other blog!! Another two hoglets were born on 20th January to Beatrix (who initially had two hoglets in October last year). Both babies are doing very well. We are now in a position to initiate a substantial release program for the hedgehogs which we hope to collaborate with a local secondary school in the area where most of them have come from.

And so, 2009 seems to have started pretty much where 2008 left off………Let us hope it brings more clarity and purpose to all our respective situations and put us in a position to keep doing what we are passionate about – saving animals and returning them to their natural environments.