European elephants #2

20-09-2008

15 years old African elephant Dzomba (Djomba) of Duisburg Zoo came to Safari Beekse Bergen last Tuesday (Sept. 16). The zoo hopes she will have some offspring from bull Calimero.
Safari Beekse Bergen now has 1.6 African elephants.

20-09-2008

Why not breed at her current home, are they related or do they don't get along?

20-09-2008

I've heard she doesn't fit into the group of Duisburg.

20-09-2008

Maybe more important, she was attacking the keepers and she couldn`t be kept in direct contact any longer. Duisburg didn`t want to change to protected contact so she had to go again. This doesn`t make Duisburg looking very good, in my opinion...

20-09-2008

Both very good reason,s hopefully she will settle in well in her new home,

20-09-2008

Well, Beekse Bergen uses protected contact, so this will surely help.

23-09-2008

Autopsy report of Tempo (Tembo, Haakon), the African bull from Aalborg Zoo, learned that he had several tumors in his brain. Tempo was euthanized on February 27, 2008 at the age of 26.

23-09-2008

Hi all,
Im really interested in the groups view on elephant training. At Belfast they are training elephants under protected contact but in doing so they are using people that have no expierience in said training. (or in fact any knowledge of any training system) If anyone who has expierience will know that this should never occur. This can cause major behavioural problems with eles and indeed is extreamly dangerous. In the UK there are the BIAZA guidelines in regards to elephant training. It states clearly in the guidelides that PC MUST be carried out by expierienced and qualified staff and goes on to list all the problems and dangers that will be encountered by using untrained staff. As Belfast is looking to bring in another two or three elephant surely this serious shortfalling in their so called training should be addressed. its not only dangerous for elephants but staff also.

23-09-2008

Whoa, ok, when was the last time an elephant was found to have tumours in its brain or is it not as rare as it seems?

Elephant training methods
23-09-2008

You may find this article interesting:

Elephant Keeper MY COOL JOB

24-09-2008

I think it is great news that Calvin got to Leipzig. For years it looked that Mekong has problem with siring calves.

BTW, breeding-age elephant groups in Munster and Munchen are not breeding well, too. Maybe they got some problem with resident bulls? Is it common for adult bull to be infertile/not to mate?

BTW2 - I seen excellent page Zoo Elephant - Asian Elephants at the Zoological Gardens of the World which shows several non-breeding mature Asian bulls in former communist countries. Anybody know if there are plans to bring them into Western breeding herds? I guess they could be exchanged for adolescent animals from the West.

24-09-2008

Well at Munster and Muchen (I assume aka munich) the bulls there are teenagers, Gajendra and Chamundi,

Gajendra has mated on two occassions with Panang but resulted in two stillbirths,

Relating in what I said before, Chamundi apparently has a confidence problem , this was discussed on another thread, and there was rumours that he would be transfered to Budapest for some strange reason, they wanted him to gain maturity, but Budapest?

With Mekong, was the successful siring of Voi nam just Luck? Or is there another issue I'm not aware of?

24-09-2008

Actually, Calvin is staying at Leipzig only for few months, then he should move to Ostrava as agreed.

25-09-2008

I hope he doesn't waste time during these months.

Actually, after spending some time in Ostrava, he could go for visits for several more zoos (like Munster, Munich, Kolmarden, Twycross and Woburn). It's what elephant bull do and enjoy.

25-09-2008

I agree, there has been a lot of empty holes if you know what I mean that need to be filled with paritcular zoos, Woburn I hope that Raja, successfully mates with the other two, Twycross though for some odd reason doesn't want to breed, this was discussed on the Twycross thread, much to the dismay of many members,