I hope you enjoyed your visit.
Did you manage to find out anything re. their elephants?
Colchester Zoo 2/9/2022- only spent about 3 hours at the zoo, but it was worth it.
General visit notes:
Firstly Amur Leopard Crispin's enclosure/viewing cave (the tall enclosure) redevelopments are slowly progressing.
Jo-Jo and Srey Ya were very active on and around their climbing frame at the top of their enclosure, and were quite visible from the top viewing area. As I was leaving I heard about 10 seconds of a Sun Bear encounter (talk), and I heard Jo-Jo and Srey Ya being referred to as a breeding pair, and the need to breed them being mentioned, though I suppose that doesn't tell us anything new really.
I saw the King Vulture mother. though no sign of the nest or chick, but the Andean Condors next door put on a great display- they were running around on the floor of their aviary, while feeding and running up to the window and looking at people-I got some good pictures.
All 3 Grey Wolf sisters were out and running around not long after their encounter, but the Bush Dogs with their new offspring were not sadly visible.
I was at the Tiger encounter and it was mentioned that Anoushka is now fed less food that Taiga and Tatana, due to less activity in her old age.
The Rhinos attracted a lot of attention at one point, as over a span of 10 or 20 minutes all 6 of them rolled in the mud at the west end of the paddock, viewable from the Africa Plateau walkway. The back path bypassing Vulture Valley to the South entrance of the Kingdom of The Wild has been named and branded 'Wilderness Walkway', shown by a sign.
On this note there seems to be a lot of rebranding and cleaning up going on recently from my experience, it all seems quite positive.
The Warthogs were not visible either- an exception compared to recent visits, I hope they haven't moved already...
More cleaning up as a tree appears to have been removed from from the Crowned Crane and Dik Dik enclosure at Edge of Africa (the calf was not visible, and the parents only just).
Speaking of Edge of Africa, the new Spotted Hyena viewing is not what I expected, and probably a lot worse than I expected because it offers and almost identical viewing opportunity to previously (the animals can't come up to the glass like I thought the change to glass would ensure), and it just reduces from the animals space, which is already not huge. At least the zoo are constantly developing and upgrading facilities at the moment!
The Male Oxford Sandy and Black Pig in Familiar Friends seems to have left (this might have been a while ago) as I only saw 2 pigs, which I assume to be his two sisters who arrived with him at Colchester Zoo in early 2020.
There has also been some other construction developments in this area.
I also noticed that in the North East of the bull paddock, there is a small area sectioned off that seems to be fenced of with electric fence. Imagine this has been the case for a while but does anyone know why?
ELEPHANT UPDATE: I was able to talk to a keeper who had been supervising elephant feedings (as I planned) for about 10 minutes or more and it was worth the wate.
1. My theory that the public elephant feedings permanently stopping because of Tanya and Opal being trained to protected contact was right, this will also affect the Perfect Partner and Keeper For The Day experiences.
2. This is happening because of the recent public controversy over the keeping of elephants in captivity, and health benefits from Tanya and Opal having a routine uninterrupted by constant visitor experiences, this was seen over lockdown.
3. At the moments the zoo are just letting all the elephants and the keepers settle down as Tanya and Opal are trained into PC, and after the financial damage of Covid- they don't plan to bring in any new individuals yet.
4. They may of course still think about breeding from A.I, but they will only breed from Tanya:
Tembo=infertile- no breeding, Opal=infertile- no breeding, Zola= not good with calves and previous miscarriages- no breeding, Tanya= successful birth previously, matriarch, fertile- breeding.
5. As I said they are currently letting the herd settle down, so know moves at the moment, and they can currently only breed through A.I, though if they were to expand it would be through females. If they were to find a new breeding male, it would be Shaka from Noah's Ark- introducing him to females would fire him up ready to breed (maybe they could breed through A.I with him now?).
6. Jambo will most likely not return anytime soon- due to a lack of socialisation with a bull when he was young his breeding abilities are not trusted, but he is happy at Valencia and so are the keepers as he is not needed to be bred from.
7.This keeper (who seemed very positive about the situation) was nice and very helpful, and recommended I do an elephant feeding before they stop (it might be possible) to be able to ask more questions while also getting to interact with the elephants, and if this doesn't happen, I will be visiting at least one Starlight Safari late night opening and could get a chance to find out more normally anyway.
