Just another day at work

: What: We didn’t have a feeding tour this morning so we prepared the food with the new students that came in on Wednesday. They were still new with most of the things so we helped them.

After feeding we did spot-checks with the 1^st years. We placed new grass in Cookie(large spotted genet) cage and cleaned the corners of the cage where she always defecates.

We placed new grass with the small tortoises and new grass in the peregrine falcon cage. They cleaned the caracals dam and picked up all the feathers that was left over from the chickens that they were fed the previous day.

I gave Oryn (serval kitten) antibiotics because of the blood that he had in his faeces. It was given Sub cutaneous (under his skin).

We placed the kittens outside for a while in the cage where the bush baby sleeps so that they can get out of the small cage that they’re in all day. They really enjoyed playing around in the grass and on the tree stumps that is in there. It was good for them to get out for a while. It will be better to find a cage that we can place them in during the day because the cage that they are in now is too small and their growing quickly now. The kittens are becoming more active and more playful and they get frustrated in the small cage. The only worry that there was for placing them in the bigger cages was that we had to remove all the branches that was in the cage. They start climbing on everything and they don’t really have good balance yet. It is a big possibility that they will fall off the branches and can get seriously hurt.

I went to town to fetch the lion cubs. Karen took them to the veterinarian in the morning for a check up and because they both got diarrhoea. The vet said that they had Coccidiosis, and prescribed them some antibiotics and dewormer. They also placed the younger lion cub on a drip because she was dehydrated, not eating and really flat (not having any energy). Hey placed dextrose in her drip. They had to place a stick next to where the drip goes into her vein to prevent her paw from pulling back the whole time. If she pulls her leg against her body the whole time the drip stops running and this results in the drip being clogged up. We had to check the drip every half hour to make sure that she wasn’t lying on it which would result in the drip not running anymore. We had to place her in a small cage under the red light so that she would still keep her normal temperature and not get cold but could only move around in a restricted space and not pull out her gelco and to prevent the other lion cub from chewing on the drip line.

One of the 1^st years brought a baby Impala in that he found on the service road. She got hurt on the inside of her leg. We cleaned the wound with SOS disinfectant even though it wasn’t that bad.

We mixed “Springbokkie mix” milk for her which consists of 120ml full cream, 1.5 L milk and 6 egg yolks. She drank half of the 50ml that we gave her but she was stressed out a lot and we (Me and Lisette) had to catch her in the outside boma where we placed her with “Lilo”, the Steenbok that we have. She was jumping up against the walls until we caught her quickly.



Baby Impala that was brought in




Drip that was in the lion cub