Highland Wildlife Park HWP 2011

They do seem to have problems with the husbandry of quite a few of their species , losing lots of Bactrian deer , takin and now wild horses , a real shame .
 
I wonder if the really bad winter then having such nice weather early in the year has caused any problems with the ground and the likes?
 
A very sad piece of news-do they institute a Marwell type regime with no hoofed animals in paddocks in the autumn/winter months?

I believe this was brought in to combat problems of a similar nature but am prepared to be corrected if my memory is faulty!
 
Presumeably some horse breeds/subspecies etc are more susceptible to this problem. I can't imagine that Scottish breeds (ie. Shetlands) that are used to wet conditions would suffer, while Przewalski's native to cold dry deserts might be. Does anybody know?
 
Not strictly HWP, but I visited YWP whilst on holiday last week and Vladimir is looking great in his new home. He was lounging by his pool while I was there. The female is a beautiful animal and we were lucky to catch a good look at her as she spent most of the day hiding in the trees in her enclosure.
 
On the park's facebook page they've said that the army have been on site helping with some bits in June -

The army are on site this June helping us with various projects including a viewing platform for musk ox, aviaries for grey owls and our snowy owls, reinstating the path to the viewpoint, constructing a bison shed and resurfacing the car park. Thanks to them for their fantastic work and apologies to our visitors for any disruption caused.
Click to expand...

Hopefully shouldn't be too long until the musk oxen arrive if the viewing platform is being built :)
 
The main reserve has been closed this morning due to the arrival of a new Bison bull. It may open later today.

UPDATE: Reserve is now reopened!
 
A great piece of news from facebook is the birth of a female bactrian wapiti, the calf is named Anoosheh, meaning lucky/happy in Afghan.
 
Jordan-Jaguar97 said:
0:0:2 Capercallie chicks born
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Not quite... it says they have made their 'debut' -Capercaiilie breed earlier in the year than this (lekking is at its height around 3rd week of April) and if you read back were probably hatchedMay/June time.;)

And in case anyone who writes the Edinburgh Zoo news items reads this;

The correct zoological terms for the young of Antelope and Deer are calves(larger species) and fawns (smaller species).
Only Horses, Zebras and Asses(equines) have foals.
 
Babu, the male red panda has been put to sleep.
He was suffering from a recurring and aggressive form of cancer which was incurable.

Lifted from the park's facebook page.
 
First visit

I visited for the first time on Monday (I'm a Chester member on holiday in Scotland so needed a zoo-fix to see me through the week ...). I had a wonderful day and was reluctant to leave after six hours. I loved the space and tranquility and saw most of the animals.

It brought back fond memories of the beaver enclosure at Chester - sticks, mud and not a single beaver in sight. I've never seen a beaver and thought HWP would be my best chance. Wrong again.

Despite that rather shakey start, I had great views of nearly everything else and really enjoyed the relaxed pace and lack of commercialism.

The land rover trip was really informative and the driver (sorry - didn't catch her name) was knowledgable with an obvious affection for the animals. I drove around by myself later in the day to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

I was delighted to see Walker, he looks like one happy bear and I am now wondering if I can mange a visit in the winter - I'd love to see him in the snow and ice but the thought of the 800 mile round trip in bad weather isn't a good one. I might have to settle for keeping up with news of him on the web site and ZooChat. Can anyone tell me why he's called 'Walker'?

So - to everyone I saw at HWP and everyone I didn't get to meet - thank you for a memorable day, carry on with the great work and I hope to see you all again before too long.
 
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