Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo Henry Doorly Zoo News 2016

Milwaukee Man said:
Construction update on the Alaskan Adventure splash pad.

Omaha zoo's new splash pad gets 800-pound sea lion sculpture and more - Living - Omaha.com
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Most zoos would be content to have a small kiddie water zone with a couple of jets of shooting water...but not Omaha! This world-class facility is going to have 75 bronze sculptures and spend $14 million on a splash park that will likely be used for only a handful of months per year. Early signs point to it being yet another great addition to this fantastic zoo.
 
If I understood correctly, they are already sedated and on their way. I hope it all goes well.
 
She will certainly get to breed! The North American population is in need of every single female possible breeding, so these fresh african imports will certainly be breeding in the future!
 
Well, the US population of Afrikan elephants is in dire need of breeding sucess since many years, and there are still females that could breed kept in zoos without a suitable bull. Hogle Zoo for example only ever had one calf and is, since many years, wasting the potential of their female (and now of their female calf, who is also in breeding age). Toledo Zoo has a fertile female, but because they rely on AI, she only produced 2 calves in more then 10 years. And I doubt she will ever have another. The North Carolina Zoo has females in breeding age, but it seems the bull doesn`t mate, that`s the situation since many years, but they have not exchanged the bull. The Maryland Zoo has a fertile female, but again the bull seems not to do the job, no exchange of the bull ever happened, and as a result the female had not had a calf in years.

I am not optimistic that anything is going to change just because there are 17 new elephants. Dallas, Omaha and Sedwick Zoo all need an adult bull for natural breeding ASAP, but there are already way too few adult, fertile bulls in the US, and those imported bulls will be too young for at least 5+ years. It looks not good at all. AI is too expensive and complicated to produce enough calves.
 
How many adult Bulls does San Diego have? Maybe its time for some of them to be transferred out to herds with breeding age females that haven't bred yet.

Also, you never know quickly a new technology will advance, for all we know in 10 or 20 years Zoos will be having much more success with AI.
 
Yassa said:
Well, the US population of Afrikan elephants is in dire need of breeding sucess since many years, and there are still females that could breed kept in zoos without a suitable bull. Hogle Zoo for example only ever had one calf and is, since many years, wasting the potential of their female (and now of their female calf, who is also in breeding age). Toledo Zoo has a fertile female, but because they rely on AI, she only produced 2 calves in more then 10 years. And I doubt she will ever have another. The North Carolina Zoo has females in breeding age, but it seems the bull doesn`t mate, that`s the situation since many years, but they have not exchanged the bull. The Maryland Zoo has a fertile female, but again the bull seems not to do the job, no exchange of the bull ever happened, and as a result the female had not had a calf in years.

I am not optimistic that anything is going to change just because there are 17 new elephants. Dallas, Omaha and Sedwick Zoo all need an adult bull for natural breeding ASAP, but there are already way too few adult, fertile bulls in the US, and those imported bulls will be too young for at least 5+ years. It looks not good at all. AI is too expensive and complicated to produce enough calves.
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Sadly I have to agree with you. We are in dire need of increased breeding, and better bull representation. I find much of the issue seems to be that the zoo's like to space the breeding of cows by many years between calves, as opposed to letting them breed every 3-5 years as they would naturally.

Happily, with the above zoo' you listed, I think there might be one beacon of hope. Going off of recent pictures, I would not be surprised if the breeding female at Toledo is indeed pregnant again. As well, the bull at Dallas is between 10 and 15 years old, so he is old enough to start breeding, happily. I am not sure about the other two.

But yes, it is a shame. There are presently very few males breeding. Jackson, Ali, Maclean, Mabu and Sdudla are the only males who have bred in the past 8 years! In comparison, we have several other males (Osh, Tutume, Thabo-Umasai, Tonka, Msholo, Willie, Artie, C'zar, and several others) who seem to have little being done in the way of attempting to breed them, even through AI, as it seems some of them can not sire offspring naturally, and the others may not be with breeding age females. Personally, I feel like a number are zoo's are simply not fully committing to breeding their females via AI, giving up after the first few failed attempts.

Hopefully in the coming years zoo's will realize they need to be breeding at maximum captivity if they will to keep the population sustainable!

Also Wenslydale, SDWAP currently only has one adult bull, Msholo, who doesn't seem to be able to breed naturally. Their other two breeding age males, Mabu and Vus-Musi, went to Reid Park Zoo and Fresno Chaffee Zoo, respectively. Mabu is already breeding again, and hopefully Musi will impregnate the two breeding age females he is with shortly! Honestly, I have a feeling me may have left us a few "presents" in San Diego before he left, we will find out within the next year and a half if I was right!
 
Hyak_II said:
Mabu is already breeding again, and hopefully Musi will impregnate the two breeding age females he is with shortly! Honestly, I have a feeling me may have left us a few "presents" in San Diego before he left, we will find out within the next year and a half if I was right!
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Super. I've been hoping that Musi impregnates Mother or Daughter or both (Miss Betts is almost 9, she will be breeding age soon) asap.
 
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