Otter Birthday Cards

At our otter celebration, visitors were given the opportunity to make birthday cards for the otters.

We hung the cards at the otter exhibit for two days.  These were two of my favorites.

Otters love their fishy birthday cakes!

Otter Celebration Pictures

Otters and visitors had a great time at our Otter Celebration on Saturday.

Our thanks to everyone that helped to make it a success!  

Here are some photos, courtesy of Anne Malarich.

Our first cake was paper mache with fish in the candles.

We had a huge tide on Saturday, and the otters seemed to have fun swimming over areas that are normally dry.  We have seven otters total, and they are managed in two groups.  We rotated the groups onto a different exhibit in the middle of the day.  All the presents and cakes were eventually dragged into the water.

Many of our otters were born in March, and this is a very common time for our wild otters to have pups as well.  It is also breeding season.  Otters sometimes take a full 365 days to have their babies!  Fortunately for them, they are not actually pregnant the whole time.  This process is called delayed implantation.

Meet Caesar

Please welcome the newest member of our Brookgreen family!

Caesar is a male tunis sheep, and he was born on February 21, 2014.  

He was named by our large animal veterinarian.

His mother, Mole, keeps a very close eye on her baby.  She is not aggressive, but puts herself between zookeepers and Caesar, and calls for him when we need to pick him up.

Caesar spends most of his time nursing and sleeping, but he loves to jump around (for no apparent reason), and we recently gave him some hay bales for exercise.

Caesar is easily on view at our Plantation Barn.  Until he is a little older, Caesar will be in the sheep stall with his mother.  This arrangement also gives Mole a rest from the group and the male sheep, Ramsey.  The young females in the group are showing a lot of interest in the new baby through the fencing.