Monday, October 4, 2010
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
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4 comments:
My dad always referred to this device as the 'elephant rotisserie.' The Dickerson Park Zoo had, if not the first, one of the first three of this design. It was installed in the late eighties.
Appears to be like the "crush" I first saw in Springfield, MO. One of their keepers, with an engineering background, designed it. I saw a demonstration when we were planning the new elephant facility for St. Louis. Not only did it rotate but the floor opened. They brought in a bull and strapped his feet to the sides. When the "crush" rotated 90 degrees and the floor opened his feet could be trimmed quickly and safely. If the work took much over 15 minutes the elephant was rotated back upright and given a break for 10 minutes or so, then returned to the working position. Pretty slick. For the bull, he took to it like a walk in the park.
I only visited Rotterdam in 1989 when they had their old facility in the Rivera Building. Kind of a scary place to work with a male elephant but all the elephants looked well. I heard of the plans to improve their facilities and it looks like they've done a great job.
Jim,
I don't understand what you meant by "the floor opened". What a deal a crush like that would be. And a male who doesn't object would be a treat you would be afraid to wish for. Hawthorn's crush was the old type, where you could only work on one side of the animal, as the other side was solid wall, with the hydraulic controls. My Nic would pass through easy enough shifting to his pen, but if the opposite door was close, no way was he going into the crush. I eventually, after much work got him to back into the crush(Nic was only afraid of things he could see.) to do his feet on one side. Then he was released, and it took another two day's to get him to back in from the opposite direction. When USDA insisted on having him weighed I and my men drug the scale into the crush for Nic. It was hysterical watching that "big, bad man" cry and whine like a baby, each time he stepped on foot back and the floor "wiggled". LOL After finally getting him backed on it and weighed, USDA wasn't happy and decided things needed to be more difficult, so they wanted him measured. I told them "those hickory timbers that are the wall behind him, are exactly 12" X 12" square. You count how many there are stacked up to the point of his spine, and you tell me how tall he is!!!!" I was wore out and Nic and I had both had it for the day, and we were in no mood for more bureaucratic crap. LOL
Wade
Jim,
I suggest the grand buildings of old like the Riviera Hall were the early attempts at "immersion exhibits" philosophically but, any architect worth his salt know's you have to design a great big massive building(look at Copenhagen's elephant house. I suggest they stole old Sybold's blueprints and rehashed them), if you are going to be looked up to, and leave your "mark."
Wade
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