So far (not) so good

Well, no doubt you have all had a tricky time of it during the past six weeks or so due to the extreme weather. No different here, we've had it bad and we're hoping its all behind us. Getting into work was the first hazard on several occasions; frozen roads, frozen padlocks, frozen gates. The list could go on indefinitely.

All of the otters have come through it without any major problems; they were given large quantities of extra bedding and up to a 50% increase in their food intake each day resulting in happy otters but a large dent in the food budget. We think Biggy and Smalley need a diet soon as they have been stealing some food from Libby, who, by the way is coming along very nicely indeed and will even come out when called for by a couple of the keepers.

Tor continues to be the happiest of creatures and it can be very uplifting when, having had a bit of a rubbishy day, you go into to feed him and the gang and he greets you like a long lost playmate; bringing toys and twigs to you to play 'tug of war' and 'fetch'. He is however, completely unaware of the effect he has on keepers when he leaps up to them to get their attention to play. (We hope he might learn to deal with the yells/screams etc one day). We aren't really that scared of him, the real problem is that he has to be the clumsiest cub ever and you never quite know where he's going to end up, or even whether he'll be the right way up! He puts me in mind of young puppies skidding and sliding around, tongues out and madly enthusiastic about everything. Especially food.

Lottie, Pluto, Kernow and Coady are all growing well and still in with their parents.

Some of you may have seen Jill (a British Otter) on your visits here; she had a very bad infection in February last year and recovered well after a very long convalescent period. She was a reclusive otter though and so we moved her away from public view in the late summer. Two weeks later we moved Tino in with her and the result is that she gave birth to one cub in late November. All three are doing fine and we hope to see the cub soon, although we are leaving them to their own devices at the moment.

Dasher, our tame Muntjac Deer had a very serious accident on the ice and broke one of this hind legs. Unfortunately the break was too serious to repair and his leg has been amputated. He is in the early stages of recovery and we are keeping our fingers crossed that he will pull through. He is now back from the vets (Castle Vets, Launceston - who have been great, thank you). At the moment he is in a straw covered stall so we can keep an eye on him for the next few days.

We are pleased that the Wallabies weren't too upset by the prolonged cold weather, we have even seen signs that at least two of them have joeys although we haven't actually seen the babies themselves. Its a very odd sight seeing wallabies in the snow, apparently quite content.

Lots and lots of trees have come down and we've plenty of chainsawing to do together with miscelleaneous renewalls and repairs. No rest for the wicked, eh?

End of open season update.

We've closed again after a very busy half term. Usually we allow visitors to hand feed the Fallow Deer but we had to withdraw food from sale in the last week of October because they had decided it was time for their rut. Fallow are normally quite shy but can be a bit of a handful at this time of year. Anyway, the bucks managed to sort the pecking order out without too much of a kerfuffle (one broken antler is all) and now the herd is back to being one big happy family, and hopefully some of the does are with fawn.

Lottie (Harriet and Tam's cub) is doing very well and might be developing a bit of "attitude". She is very pushy (like her mum) and has taken to stealing her dad's food without fear of any retribution (because mum is on hand). She tries the same thing on with the keepers too and usually gets away with it (same reason). The three of them get on well (unless food is involved) and, apart from digging a huge hole and managing to collapse a 9 foot section of concreted water way, are well behaved.

Cinnamon and Leap continue to do well, although I do sometimes question their hunting skills. I have seen both of these otters hunt successfully, but the other day, after a large meal, they were rolling around in the water together when a drake landed in their pen. They gave chase, caught it quickly, and then let it go whilst they played with each other. The drake seized his chance and tried to make off, but as soon as he legged it they chased and caught him again, but, as before as soon as he was captured the two otters lost interest and started to play with each other. This happened once more before the duck worked out how how to escape from the two playful predators (i.e do it quietly and slowly) and flew off, apparently unscathed.

Biggy, Smalley, Tor and Libby are still all living together. Libby is exceptionally shy and needs very careful handling. It might be that Libby is the first agoraphobic otter that we have ever encountered; we are trying various strategies to overcome this and we are having some but not complete success. Tor is still stupidly cute but scarily strong. the other night (yes, in the dark) I was pottering around in their pen when he jumped onto my lap and started opening and closing his mouth very gently ("play with me") I took my cue and found his "octy" (a toy octopus he's had since he lived at home with us) and gave him a bit of a roll around with it and once he was satisfied that we were still close friends he let me get on with what I was doing. He is very strong, he isn't at all aggressive but I do worry that he might make a mistake that involves my fingers and his teeth......

Dasher our tame Muntjac continues to be the major criminal at the Otter Park; holding up members of staff for monkey nuts, squeezing through the barn door to burgle various food bins, and worst of all stalking staff until he gets his grapes!!

We are fighting the weather (has it been raining?) whilst we get on with winter maintenance and a brand new pen for some exciting new arrivals in the near future.

Overall things look very good considering the appalling weather; we've only lost a dozen or so large trees (time to sharpen the chainsaws) and a small landslip here and there. Lets hope it dries up soon.

Autumn arrives

The weeks have flown by again so time for an update. Tor is doing really well; we had initially tried to get him accepted by our other hand reared otters as we had not been able to find him a play mate elsewhere in the country and he needed to have an otter to socialise with. One of the keepers would take Tor into the pen and supervise the introductions; Biggy and Smalley are so accepting and inquisitive and tried to play with him almost straight away. Cinnamon and Leap just ignored him and kept their distance. After several days of Tor being taken into the pen with a keeper to supervise the introductions Leap decided he was not acceptable and attacked him just a warning but enough for us to know it was not going to work out.

Plan B then was to separate Biggy and Smalley from Cinnamon and Leap as this would have to be done in the near future and house Tor with Biggy and Smalley. Tor moved into the pen first and Biggy and Smalley came a little quicker than anticipated! John put the box into the pen for them to explore and get used to before we caught them up but they were straight in so they were moved there and then!!

They have all settled well and do not appear to miss each other which is good as they have all been together since such a young age. Cinnamon and Leap still share a box at night and by the second morning Tor, Biggy and Smalley were all sharing the same box at night too. Tor has grown in confidence over the weeks and now he comes out for the feeds and the three otters played really well together so mission accomplished!

On 27^th August however we had another abandoned British Otter brought into us, Libby was very dehydrated, stressed, had an abscess on his hind leg and a badly damaged toe on his front left foot which meant he walked with a bad limp. On a good note his lab results came back clear which meant once he had been treated for the injuries and was feeding well he could mix with Biggy’s group. Libby was only about seven weeks old so still needed milk and was very aggressive towards the keepers so we wanted him to integrate with Biggy’s group as soon as possible. He is living in the pen with them now but is very reluctant to come out when the public are around but will sleep with the other otters. We hope that his confidence will continue to grow as time passes.

Harriet’s cub is nine weeks old now and has been spotted outside this week and even seen learning to swim with Harriet which is fantastic. Tamarisk is still kept firmly in his place but we hope as the weeks pass now he will be allowed to join in!

Carmen, Coady and Kernow are still thriving and have adapted well to not having Tino around, he went off site to take part in a breeding programme with one of our females, Jill in August.

William, Hilda and Pluto are a joy to watch when they are outside playing together. Pluto definitely takes after his Mother and is very vocal and pushy when it comes to food!

Our two young Bucks are getting more confident as the days pass and we are watching to see which one becomes the more dominant male. Little Dasher can still be seen around the centre and will stop to be made a fuss of and eat from your hand and has been spotted in the gift shop on several occasions last week!!

The weather has been delightful for September and our visitors are enjoying the warm weather. The leaves are starting to turn orange and brown, a sure sign that the open season is drawing to an end and that autumn is arriving.

Gold CHEFS Award for Mandy and Lin, cub for Harriet.

On Monday 27th July at about 12.45pm Harriet gave birth to a single cub. She took us by surprise, giving no warning at all; we actually thought she and Tamarisk weren't getting on too well but that just shows how wrong we were! We don't interefere with British Otter cubs unless we have to so we don't know the sex of the new baby. It is four weeks old tomorrow and doing well. It has begun to change colour from silver to brown, starting at the head and gradually working backwards along the body. If all goes well its' eyes will open a week tomorrow and it will start exploring shortly afterwards.

On a subject very close to my heart (and to be honest, stomach) our tea room has been awarded a Gold CHEFS Award from Cornwall Council. This is in recognition of high standards of cleanliness, training, and use of healthy, local produce. We are one of the first tea rooms to receive the award (only two gold awards have been awarded so far in Cornwall since the new unitary authority took over). Mandy and Lin have worked extremely hard over the past few years to update and improve the tea room and we are very proud of them.

Hansel

Hansel's antlers continued to give him trouble in the days following his accident. We expected them to fall off quite quickly but it soon became clear that that was not going to happen. On Tuesday we examined him and it was clear that his condition was very grave indeed; he hadn't broken the actual antlers but the pedicle below them (the pedicle is the part of his skull that supports the antlers).

He was put down later that evening.

We will miss this mischievious, handsome buck very much indeed.

New arrivals

Firstly I would like to say thank you to the children of Coads Green Primary School who have named Carmen’s cubs for us. The smaller of the two (a female?) will be called Coady and the larger one (a male?) will be called Kernow. I’ve just been trying the names out with the cubs and they seem to like them already.

Since last writing (too long I know) we have had several new arrivals; two new Fallow Deer fawns, one now three weeks old and the other only a few days. Both are doing very well.

The same cannot be said for their father, Hansel. He has been growing what looked like a superb set of antlers although they were less than half grown and still covered in velvet. Alas no longer; on Saturday night he seems to have tried them out on something a lot bigger and tougher than his antlers were (at the early stages of growth antlers are quite fragile and only become useful weapons when the velvet has dropped off and the bone has had a chance to dry out). The result is that he has badly damaged both of them and they now dangle around the sides of his head and make him look like a miniature moose. They may now dry up and drop off or continue to grow in a deformed shape, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s not uncommon for young bucks to do this and they soon learn not to mess with their antlers until they are properly grown. Hopefully he has learnt his lesson.

Sonny (one of our Asian Short Clawed bitches) continues to put on weight and appear pregnant but as yet no babies have appeared. She is eleven years old and we are a bit worried that this, being her first (and rather surprising) pregnancy, will be complicated. We are watching her carefully and crossing our fingers for her.

On Friday 26^th June we took a phone call early in the morning; a British Otter cub had been found a few miles from us near a village called Week St. Mary. We went to see what we could do and when we arrived saw a very small, thin and sorry looking little male cub. His eyes were full of dried mucus and barely open. We guessed his age at just over 5 weeks. We had taken our first aid kit with us and gave him some fluids there and then. His eyes immediately began to weep and in less than a minute he was able to open them properly and look back at us with deep blue, frightened eyes. He was down but not out.

Tor, as we have named him, was obviously dehydrated and took fluids readily. He had been found high on a hill with no obvious water course nearby and no explanation as to why he was there.

We took him home and weighed him, 700 grams, a real lightweight. Over the next few days his life really did hang in the balance. Visits to the vet confirmed he had various infections and muscular difficulties on his right side. He was fed from a syringe every hour and a half, day and night. Some days were good and some bad as his body fought for survival.

Twelve days after taking him in he appeared a little brighter than usual and since then he has forged ahead really well. He still has some problems to overcome and he isn’t out of the woods yet but we are beginning to get just the tiniest bit more optimistic. Weaning has begun and that means much longer periods between feeds (thank goodness). We have also introduced him to water which he seems to like as long as it’s nice and warm and only an inch deep. He might be an otter but he’s certainly not very aquatic yet!

Thanks to Nicola and Richard for finding Tor and doing something about it in time to save him.

The Royal Cornwall Show

When Mandy and I took over this park in 2006 some of our friends thought we were going mad as it was such a change to our previous way of life. Perhaps they were right and maybe we're going even madder because a few weeks ago we were invited to take some of our otters to the Royal Cornwall Show, a huge three day event with all sorts of country pursuits and activities going on.

We were provided with a tent only 30 yards from a beautiful fishing lake in the Countryside area along with an outside area in which to build a portable pen.

Barry, one of our keepers, and I spent some time designing and building a portable pen that would keep the otters in and people, dogs etc. out. A few days before the event we went to the site and built the pen, which included a large bath for the otters to plunge in as they wanted.

Mandy and I had already chosen the otters who were to accompany us; Biggy and Smalley, because of their bold nature. Taking British Otters to a show like this might be too much for them, with all the noises and sights. British Otters also need an awful lot more security as they are much bigger and more athletic than their Asian cousins.

On the Wednesday evening before the show we arrived on site with our boys. We showed them round and let them have a little swim before putting them to bed at 10pm. They were good as gold. Straight to sleep and no going to the loo in the night (much appreciated when we were sleeping only 2 feet from them). They woke up at 630am and were bright and confident. 

They spent all day playing with a keeper, sleeping on a keeper or getting a keeper as wet as could be.

They took no time at all to get used to the hubbub of the show, the shooting, the horses and cattle moving around and the tannoy descriptions of the various events that went on from dawn 'til dusk.

By evening they were quite tired so we put them to bed early and they slept through just like the night before. 

When they had been young they had been toilet trained, we didn't expect them to remember it but to our amazement they did! Just one small accident in nearly four full days.

Their good behaviour continued throughout and they were the stars of the show (in my opinion anyway). 

On the Saturday evening we returned with them to the park and reintroduced them to Leap and Cinnamon. This can be tricky as even after short absences some otters don't seem to recognise one another but not in this case. They seemed genuinely pleased to see each other and were all soon rolling gently with on another in the water, even ignoring the food we had taken down for them.

All in all it was a great experience for us, and them too. The seemed to enjoy the change and the additional attention. The only real drawback was that they didn't have an otter policy in the beer tent so we couldn't take them in (joking!).

All of the otters here are fine. Carmen's cub are a joy to watch now that they can swim well and are confident enough to come out when the public are there.

We have been less succesful with our birds of prey though with no chicks as yet from any of them although some are still sitting.

Its all go so I'd better get back to it while its light.

Thanks to all who helped us at the Royal Cornwall and hope to see some of you at the Launceston Show if all goes to plan.