Jitu is off to Spain » Blackpool Zoo

28-09-2008

All the best for Jitu, like said before, wishing of course babies for the future for a new male, all for the best, I guess

28-09-2008

They still seem to regard the existing regime as satisfactory, unfortunately, whereas Blackpool have acted positively regarding their nonbreeding situation.

28-09-2008

Just proves that it is a mangement issue at Twycross at the moment.

28-09-2008

Can you elaborate at all? I have no idea what is going on there...

28-09-2008

What I mean't was that Blackpool have actively tried to sort out their problem with there Male. Where ares Tywcross seem to want to sit and wait, these two different approaches are obviously management issues within the zoos.

Sorry for any confusion.

28-09-2008

Its okay, I don't really know what goes on at Twycross anymore.

As far as the Gorillas though- Blackpool only needed to replace a single animal(Jitu) to hopefully give them success.

Admiottedly Twycross is a bit more complicated, with the two currently nonbreeding groups- one with the 3 older animals and the other containing the five year old juvenile but no male. But the 'wait and see' approach has been going on a long time now. I'm wondering if 'Joe's recent death will change anything though I rather doubt it as its not connected to the other issues.

29-09-2008

True, True. However there are many issues at Twycross at the moment some not so complicated.

I don't joes death will change anything as he lived alone, but it would be great to shake things up there and maybe swap the breeding females for a batchelor group as was mentioned before in this thread.

29-09-2008

To they have taken where it ? Bioparc Valencia maybe? or Loro Parque in Canary Islands?

29-09-2008

Sorry, not sure of your question but Jitu is going to Valencia.

29-09-2008

It is a good idea but I think Pigs(or Gorillas?) would have to fly before it happened. I'm sure Twycross won't be parting with any of their females. We can only hope a male is added to the younger group.

29-09-2008

Even combining the two groups would be better than doing nothing.

I think some of us need to start over in life and get into the zoo industry to sort out some of these places

29-09-2008

In the 'Joe dies at Twycross' thread I suggested that they bring the 3 animals from the newest house and put them in Joe's old area. Then they could easily(and at their own pace) integrate them into a single group with 'SamSam' as the group silverback. It would be even better if they added a younger male(e.g. Dublin's 'Kesho') as a potential breeder too as SAmSam is probably 'past it' now and was never a virile breeder anyway.

an alternative scenario would be to have SamSam & Bongo( the eldest female) as a non-breeding pair in Joe's old quarters, and a new male with the other three females on the other side.

Both these set-ups would mean all the Gorillas(there are only 6 now) would live in the House near the Giraffes, leaving the other house vacant for e.g. Bonobos.

'SamSam', the only adult male they now have, already looks rather decrepit and seems considerably older than his years- he's 36. I suspect he won't last that long either so eventually they may HAVE to do something!!

29-09-2008

I will go for the alternative scenario. I feel SamSam has never had a good track record. So, keep him with the elderly female Bongo whom he gets along with and when next he is brought under for a procedure try to collect semen for gene banking.

Then integrate all other gorillas in one large family grouping and bring in a totally unrelated male - perhaps the one from Dublin - a mother reared group (important issue here) - and have him establish as the group silverback and (undoubtedly) an apt breeder.

29-09-2008

I havent actually visited Twycross myself, so i dont want to be too critical of things going on there. But just from reading threads and comments on zoobeat, it seems that there is a big lack of pro-activeness in that zoo. Isn't a similar thing going on with their Asian elephants in terms of breeding? (sorry for pushing this thread in a different direction, but it seemed logical to me to compare the two).

Could it be that breeding these animals is not as high on the zoo's ageda as it should be? Again, it sounds super critical of an institution which im sure gives immense care to the animals, but its pretty much the only conclusion one can draw from all of this.

29-09-2008

The Twycross elephant debate is a whole other can of worms.

Currently it is an all-female group (with viable females) and there doesn't appear to have been any intention of getting a male. About 10 years ago they sent two females to Chester to be mated by Chester's then breeding bull, Chang.

They have gone down the AI route now and there is one cow currently pregnant (maybe more?)

EDIT: Perhaps Sim could move these twycross posts into a relevant thread as we appear to have strayed far from the original thread topic.