00:01We have four types of rhino here at the Wild Animal Park. We have the southern
00:06white rhinos that I work with along with the greater one-horned Asian rhinos in
00:10our Asian Plains exhibit and then we also have the northern white rhinos in
00:14our South Africa exhibit and the black rhinos in their own enclosure. Most of
00:18the animals I work with have personalities and the white rhinos are
00:21particularly fun. We allow four to eight flakes of hay per rhino and 25 pounds of
00:28pellets for each rhino every day. And today since it's a rainy day they're
00:34going to get just hay so we'll probably double the amount of hay that we feed in
00:37the exhibit today. We have eight white rhinos in the East African exhibit, one
00:43male and seven females.
00:47Chuck, our male, is kind of the nonchalant guy that's always hanging around waiting
00:52for one of the girls. We also have Kiyazi and Entombe. Entombe is one of the
00:57original rhinos that came to the Wild Animal Park from South Africa and Kiyazi is
01:02her coalition partner.
01:05We have three female rhinos that tend to hang together. They're Dumisha, Utamu and
01:09Holly. Dumisha is the oldest and tends to hang to the back and Utamu whose name is
01:15sweetness is always the one at the front kind of checking things out and Holly
01:19tends to be in the middle kind of seeing how things are going before she
01:23enters a situation. White rhino horns are made of compressed keratin strands and if
01:29you look at Utamu's horn you'll be able to see the strands. We have two new
01:34additions here to the rhino family at the Wild Animal Park. We have Dakari and
01:38Casey who both came to us from Florida. And what we're going to do is we're
01:42going to give them small handfuls. Matt and I are going to give them small
01:45handfuls of alfalfa in exchange for coming to the truck when they're called. And our
01:50plan is to eventually get them to come to the truck, follow us all the way up to
01:54the BOMA and then we'll be able to lock them into the BOMA and get weights on
01:58them and hopefully do blood draws and other things in the future.
02:01Come on girls.
02:03Can I have to get over here today?
02:06All right well.
02:07Come on Dakari.
02:09Casey is a little bit more standoffish but because she's been paired with Dakari she
02:14actually is learning to come over to the truck and do part of our training with
02:17her.
02:17Part of the reason we bring them over to the truck is so that we can be
02:20tactile with them and actually rub and touch them. They enjoy being touched and
02:24that's one of the rewards they get for doing the behaviors correctly.
02:49You're all right. See that wasn't so bad. This is the best training session we've ever had with the rhinos.
02:55This is awesome.
03:10What I like most about being a rhino keeper is that through the society I've had the opportunity to travel
03:15and get together with other rhino keepers from around the world and share our knowledge and make things better for
03:21the rhinos we all take care of.
03:23It's a four-year-old female rhino. Her name is Alta and she's just after a 30 day quarantine has
03:29been
03:29released into our new exhibit the Asian plains exhibit at the wild animal park. Alta came
03:33from the Bronx Zoo and she was sent here on a breeding loan. Well initially once she was
03:39released she was a little a little spooky or a little flighty. Coming out into this size of
03:43an exhibit there's many things that she has to get used to. Not only the animals in the
03:47exhibit but vehicles. We have keeper trucks out there. We have our photo caravan
03:50trucks. We have equipment that's working in the field. Initially she was actually
03:54charging some of the vehicles which isn't that uncommon. They don't you know she's
03:57probably never really been exposed to trucks driving around her. So once she got
04:00got in and settled in and she started realizing that the trucks were bringing food
04:03and certainly the photo caravans she looks at them entirely different now. Now that
04:07she's getting used to the enclosure there are several species of deer, antelope,
04:13cattle. A lot of animals that she would be interacting with in the wild of India
04:17or Nepal are very similar to the animals that she's she's integrating it with now.
04:22We'll probably give her maybe a month or so out there on her own and then
04:25eventually we'll release the mail and just make sure she knows the exhibit
04:29she's able to negotiate it. The mail that she will be paired up with was brought in
04:33from a zoo in India. That's a new breeding completely new breeding group with her and
04:38him and they're really not sexually mature until they're about seven years old.
04:42We have a few years for her to get acclimated into the exhibit, settle in and
04:45then I would certainly expect her to have a calf by the time she's probably eight
04:48nine years old. If any of our guests would like to come out and see Alta you
04:54will take a photo caravan or you can take our new Savannah Safari.
04:57you
04:57you
04:58you
04:59you
05:01you
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