Saturday 8 March 2014

Okutala: Rhinos



Okutala was already pretty cool with being home to 3 giraffes and 4 elephants but they also have 4 rhinos. Unlike the other animals the rhinos will probably not ever be released but will have a large enclosure to live in. They won’t be released due to the high risk of them being poached for their horn. These are white rhinos, though I called them red rhinos due to the dirt. White rhinos have a flat nose for grazing unlike the black rhinos who have a hooked nose for easier eating bushes. 

The 2 pairs are: Noah & Valarie and Dan & Dina. 

As guests we did see them every day, well actually twice a day since we got to feed them a bale of lovely lucern hay to them morning and afternoon. Felt weird feeding beautiful lucern ( alfalfa) hay to rhinos instead of horses (though the 9 horses at the lodge got it as well.) 

Dan & Dina are the newer pair who are still a bit shy of humans since they did come from a hunting lodge. But are slowly coming around. Noah & Valerie are the older pair who may also be pregnant now. :D It would be super exciting to have a baby rhino in , wait for it ..... A year and a half! LOL 

Most of the animals here are radio collard and the rhinos are no exception. I had always wondered where or how they get radio collard. Turns out they wear it as an anklet on the left hind leg. And they actually get micro chipped twice: one in their neck and one in their horn. The theory being that if the horn is cut off and found, it can be returned to the owner. No like it is a lot of help since the rhino would most likely be dead by that point. That was something I hadn’t known is that you can’t even protect the rhinos from poaching by cutting off their horns (very controversial idea) because there is actually a big (5kg) portion of horn under the skin which people will dig out as well as every thing else visible. But when ivory is worth an insane amount, people will do anything to get it.  

And one thing I always smile at is the rhino house. It is a pretty impressive building of small pens and shoots to move the rhinos through and to load/unload. I smile because back at Mill Park ( The thoroughbred stud farm in Oz where I lived/worked at) we had the elephant house and hippodrome, so now I know of a rhino house. And that loading shoot is pretty impressive. 

Okutala: parrots, horses & goats!


Surprisingly one of the animals that I bonded most with here at Okutala were 2 of the macaw parrots. The aviary was pretty small for the number of birds in it but it was a temporary one and there are actually 2 massive ones being built with in the next couple months. I’m not sure what it was about the 2 macaws but they loved sitting on my shoulders and my head. Lol I think my Tilley hat did fascinate them. They were pretty entertaining birds even if one tried to take my finger nail off! Ouch! 
The horses were pretty cool too. They are a bit of a mixed herd of 2 stallions (buckskin & chestnut), 2 pregnant broodmares (grey and bay), an older gelding, 2 -2 yrs cremellos, yearling cremello and a foal.  They only arrived last month. No one really knows how much training they have but most of them are pretty friendly. We did spend a couple hours deworming them. The big buckskin stallion is probably the friendliest one of the bunch and definitely use to getting his way, bit spoiled. I had to laugh at him because he is so food motivated that Livia managed to distract him by walking around feeding him one pellet of grain at a time while we fed/dewormed the others. I was actually offered a “job” ( working to cover food and bed) working with the horses. But ended up turning it down since I wasn’t planning on being in Namibia for much longer. And the risk of getting hurt and still having lots of traveling left to do. Would have been fun to do though. 

I do have to quickly mention the goats since I know Keiko is reading this. :D The herd of 23 goats that Okutala owns and are milked to use for cheese. The guests walk them out to their daytime paddock and then get the joyous task of finding them and bringing them back in ,in the afternoon. Bringing them in was sometimes a bit of a long hot task trying to find them in the bushes. Specially if you go out with a few people and someone else finds them and you can’t hear the other person yelling to say that they have been found. Pretty cute but not the friendliest goats.

And while I was there, another smaller herd of goats had been found on the property so they were rounded up and kept with the horses til the owners were tracked down. PJ adored the big billy goat who he named Baloo  and was heart broken when the goats went home. He blamed me for not keeping Baloo for him. 

Okutala: parrots, horses & goats!


Surprisingly one of the animals that I bonded most with here at Okutala were 2 of the macaw parrots. The aviary was pretty small for the number of birds in it but it was a temporary one and there are actually 2 massive ones being built with in the next couple months. I’m not sure what it was about the 2 macaws but they loved sitting on my shoulders and my head. Lol I think my Tilley hat did fascinate them. They were pretty entertaining birds even if one tried to take my finger nail off! Ouch! 
The horses were pretty cool too. They are a bit of a mixed herd of 2 stallions (buckskin & chestnut), 2 pregnant broodmares (grey and bay), an older gelding, 2 -2 yrs cremellos, yearling cremello and a foal.  They only arrived last month. No one really knows how much training they have but most of them are pretty friendly. We did spend a couple hours deworming them. The big buckskin stallion is probably the friendliest one of the bunch and definitely use to getting his way, bit spoiled. I had to laugh at him because he is so food motivated that Livia managed to distract him by walking around feeding him one pellet of grain at a time while we fed/dewormed the others. I was actually offered a “job” ( working to cover food and bed) working with the horses. But ended up turning it down since I wasn’t planning on being in Namibia for much longer. And the risk of getting hurt and still having lots of traveling left to do. Would have been fun to do though. 

I do have to quickly mention the goats since I know Keiko is reading this. :D The herd of 23 goats that Okutala owns and are milked to use for cheese. The guests walk them out to their daytime paddock and then get the joyous task of finding them and bringing them back in ,in the afternoon. Bringing them in was sometimes a bit of a long hot task trying to find them in the bushes. Specially if you go out with a few people and someone else finds them and you can’t hear the other person yelling to say that they have been found. Pretty cute but not the friendliest goats.

And while I was there, another smaller herd of goats had been found on the property so they were rounded up and kept with the horses til the owners were tracked down. PJ adored the big billy goat who he named Baloo  and was heart broken when the goats went home. He blamed me for not keeping Baloo for him.