Hey guys and girls! In this blog I’ll be updating you on some of the training I’ve been up to at the park, I’ve picked a small selection of animals I’m working with.

Clouded leopards

I have been working with the gorgeous clouded leopards Hari and China with the aim of getting them ready for voluntary vaccinations! Having had a swanky new training shelf constructed I was on my way. Both were slightly wary of the new shelf they now had in their enclosure so I gave them a few days to get used to it. Hari is now a superstar and runs straight over to it when he sees me, pushing his side up flush to the mesh allowing me to touch with the training needle every time! China on the other hand is taking a little longer to get the hang of things but we will get there soon I reckon!

Meerkats

The meerkat mob have been fantastic at crate training as they are always so inquisitive of anything new in their enclosure, so when I left the crates in the enclosure they did not hesitate to explore them, push them over, play with them and realise they were nothing threatening, just a fun thing to play in! After a few sessions the meerkats began to run over to the crates every time I produced them whilst I rewarded them as they entered the crate. I now have all adults AND PUPS!! happily sitting in the crates, which is very useful should the need arise.

Pelicans

Its still early days with these guys, I only just started with them a few days ago, but we’d love to get them used to standing on the scales for us. Barry, one of our male pelicans, is quite the character and we love him but he’s not the best at new scary things. Upon introducing him to the scales he was not impressed and played ‘the scales are lava!’. Wish me luck in getting him brave enough to go on them!

Giraffe

I mentioned in my previous blog about starting the long process of training the giraffe to present the hoof. So far we are making good progress, both Ron and Reudi are coming closer to the training area but still not sure (giraffe do not like new things/routines/objects!) so it takes a while to get them used to a new procedure. Robin is top of the class at the moment as he is at the stage now where he is standing on a step on queue for us, which will lead to us rolling the hoof under so we have access to it.

Loki

I have been working a lot with our handsome Jaguar male Loki, he is fantastic to work with as he’s so keen to train and very intelligent so picks up things quickly. Its great to see him enjoying the sessions and stimulating him with new challenges and behaviours. Some of the things I’m working on are emergency recall and tail presentation. He has his very own ‘Loki whistle’ which he associates with a reward, when making this sound in the house he comes in very quickly, this behaviour can be brilliant should something happen to the enclosure and we need to get him in. I hope to work with all the cats with this behaviour, but he is proving to be a wonderful animal to trial it with!

I have much more exciting training going on which I hope to update you on in future blogs! 😊

About Georgia - Head of Training