FAQ - What’s the saddest thing about being a zookeeper?

Linda and a Yearling Doe

Without a doubt, it was always the death of an animal.  I was always upset when something died.  Sometimes death just happens. An animal is old or has developed an incurable condition. Some species, like hamsters and mice, have very short life spans. 

Life in a Zoo The Real Thing: Daisy the Deer and the Emu Chicks

Later in our zoo days we began to breed emus. We had the incubators and all the equipment to hatch eggs for other breeders.  

After the chicks hatch, they spent about a week in the hatchery. Then we took them to the chick barn.  This was a specially built building with four stalls inside it.  The first stall was for the tiny babies. When they reached a certain size, we transferred them to the next stall. It was important to keep the emu chicks separated by size, because the bigger ones could trample and hurt the smaller ones.By the time they were about three months old, they were big enough to stay outside, so we moved them from the barn.   

Life in a Zoo The Real Thing: Kurye and Deer in the Front Yard

Our Front Yard

Can you see the three deer in the front yard?  Faline is on the left, Daisy has her backside to us, and Lily is facing us near the big white dog.

Life in a Zoo: The Real Thing - Bottle Feeding a Fawn -Part Two

Raising Faline was a breeze. The next spring, my real challenge came. Instead of one fawn, I had three, only a few days apart!

Now instead of one bottle, there were three bottles. Now, the first thing I learned was that Daisy, Lily, and Clover each had their own favorite nipples. There was no switching them.

Not too much of a problem when they were on one bottle each. Although holding three bottles at one time was a bit tricky.  At first I tried preparing six bottles with six nipples. But they would have nothing to do with the new nipples, they wanted their original nipples.

Wow! What an uproar when it was time to change bottles!  At just about the same time they would all three suck their bottles flat. I had to snatch them out of their mouths, remove the nipples, and replace them on the three filled bottles.

In the mean time, I was attacked by three obviously starved babies, bawling and mewing, leaping into my lap and trying to suckle any bit of my skin their lips could reach… and all this while trying to screw the nipples on three full bottles without spilling anything!

They were in a shaking frenzy in the few seconds it took me to make the switch. Then trying to unlatch three fawns from my ear lobes, throat, and … ahem… anything else they could reach and getting the RIGHT nipple into the RIGHT mouth caused a few exciting moments.

I can honestly tell you there absolutely are no words to describe adequately the sensation of a lip-lock on one’s armpit!

Life in a Zoo: The Real Thing - Bottle Feeding a Fawn - Part One

Fawns, like all baby mammals, are very much like human babies. They need to nurse, they need comfort and cuddling, and they need to sleep.  Like human babies, in the first few weeks of life they need to be fed round the clock in two-hour intervals.

The first spring we received an orphaned fawn, we learned a lot about feeding babies.  At night she slept in a dog carrier in our bedroom. The alarm clock would go off every two hours. I mixed her formula and fed her.

At first we had trouble getting her to take the bottle.  I had struggled with her for several hours, trying to get her to nurse, but nothing worked.  Then, as my mother hovered over her, she bumped mom’s chin and suddenly started nursing. She needed to bump an udder in order to stimulate the nursing behavior. 

She suckled voraciously. There was much tail switching, stamping of little hooves, forelegs kneeing me as she inhaled the milk.  All feedings were like that. Sometimes in her eagerness to get the bottle, she would actually snatch it out of my hand. 

At first, she took only a third to a half a bottle of milk per feeding.  As she matured, we increased to a full bottle per feeding, then two bottles.  I learned to keep two bottles ready. She would literally suck one bottle flat before I could pull it out of her mouth and cram the next one in!

When she was about a month, she no longer needed night feedings. Thank goodness!

Along with the feedings, came the “diapering”.  Fawns, like puppies and kittens, cannot relieve themselves without their mother stimulating them by licking their little bottoms. (yecch). I wasn’t about to lick her, so I used a warm wet washcloth.  I would hold a disposable diaper under her to catch the “overflow”.

After about a month, we no longer needed diapering. She continued to nurse until weaning, some time in November.