Day out with orphaned baby elephants at Wildlife Trust

Simotua is about 20 months old. What makes him stand out among the elephant calves at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is the hole in his head and the healing scar on his leg.

He is one of the 33 baby elephants, as of October, which call the DSWT home.

The site in the Nairobi National Park that has, for years, been known for its elephant rescue missions can be accessed through the gate along Magadi Road, across Multi Media University of Kenya.

Every day for an hour, the public is treated to a viewing of the feeding hour for the orphan calves rescued from across the country.

A number of calves were orphaned during poaching attacks, some still bearing the scars, others were found fallen in wells and others lost their parents due to natural causes and illness.

The first set of the younger calves comes in for feeding, each taking about three litres of formula milk.

“Elephants have a very low fat digestion and even worse when it comes to digesting fat in the milk of other animals. Therefore, their diet consists of formula milk, similar to that consumed by human babies,” explains Julius Shivegha.

Elephant calves fed on animal milk, except that of an elephant, diarrhoea to death within hours of consuming it.

The calves are fed every three hours, and the rest of the time is spent running around in the woods, which is aimed at helping them socialise with their natural habitat.

Each orphan has its own shed where it sleeps, the younger ones having a minder who spends the night with them while the older ones, who are being weaned from human contact may not have one.

The human contact is reduced to allow for a smooth transition when the elephants are reintroduced to the wild and helps them reduce overreliance on humans.

At the door of each shed is a sign bearing the name, age and where the calf was found. The elephants sleep on fresh hay, with a blanket hanging at the entrance. According to Shivegha, this blanket is the mother figure for the calves which sleep with their trunks resting on the blanket as they would with their mother in the wild.

200 elephants have been rehabilitated by the Trust into the Tsavo ecosystem. They spend five to 10 years at the elephant rehab before they finally join their new families in the wild.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is done in the Tsavo National park where the elephants are allowed to join a family for a few hours each day until they are finally comfortable enough to go into the wild.

Caring for the elephants at DSWT comes at a premium as each calf requires $900 (Sh90,900) a month. To meet the costs, the Trust opens its doors to the public for an hour daily, where for Sh500 per person, you are treated to a feeding session between 11am and 12pm and a history class on each elephant at the site.

In addition, there is an adoption programme that allows individuals to foster an elephant for as low as $50 (Sh5,050). This entitles the foster parent access to updates of their elephant and others at the park. It also gives parents an opportunity to come see the calves go to sleep for the night and on special times, a visit to the rehabilitation centres in the Tsavo.

In the first six or so months, the elephant diet is primarily made up of formula milk. By eight months, it is primarily vegetables.

The tusks begin growing anywhere from a year old. To help gauge the age of the calves, explains Shivegha, the team uses features including the umbilical cord. The cord typically falls off within the first month, while the calves also have skin under their feet which sheds when they are approximately three months old as well as the appearance of the tusks.

In the nearby enclosure, is Maxwell, the blind rhino. The nine-year- old male was found roaming around in the national park, brought to the sanctuary and treated for an eye infection.

The expected recovery did not take place and a surgeon was brought in to operate on the young rhino, only for the blindness to be discovered as permanent and genetic.

The rhino lives in the enclosure, for its safety and survival too.

“He would not be able to defend his territory effectively in the wild,” says Shivegha. “We also don’t want him to mate because the blindness is genetic and may be passed down to the offspring.”

Max, as the rangers fondly refer to him, is seemingly friendly, as black rhinos are. The species is less temperamental than its white counterpart.

dwainainah@ke.nationmedia.com