Today we’ve had a very special day.
We’ve had the official opening of the Center for elephant care and here at the zoo and that was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip.
Obviously it was very exciting to have a royal visit.
When her Majesty entered the new center she was able to see some of the guys working with the elephants closely.
So we were doing foot inspections- because we do a lot of foot care with the elephants.
We’re also doing mouth checks- and also seen the elephants naturally fee by taking branches off of trees and eating out of time feeders that situated in in the roof of the barn and they come down through the evening to kind of enrich the animals.
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When she entered the center we had her namesake.
We had Elizabeth in the barn.
Elizabeth was ten months of age and she would form the day after the Queen’s birthday and with her was Krishna and also Myer,
Her on see that help look after.
At the end of it we actually did an unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the opening of the new elephant center and straight afterwards the Queen actually was able to feed one of elephants, Donna, who’s seven years old, and she actually gave her two bananas straight into a trunk, and I think she was actually very happy with that and was very interested in the way that elephants feed and how they actually used their nose to feed with.
But the scent is special because what it does is it offers a much better substrate for the animals to actually be on.
So what we’re trying to do is try to create a natural environment inside for the elephants rather than it just being outside.
So we’ve got three trunks in there, we’ve got the time feeders with varying food, so we’re making it more challenging for them to actually eat.
So they have to dig and work at the getting the food, which is great exercise for their muscles, and we also build sand mounds in there, so it actually gives them a nice area to lay against and sleep on.
