OUR ELEPHANT BABY
The day after Christmas 2021, in sharp contrast to the gloomy news, the Tevodas (female deities of the Hindu pantheon) looked upon the very last pachyderms of Ratanakiri province and gave them a major gift: the first baby elephant to be born in captivity in Cambodia for some thirty years!
This birth took everyone by surprise, our team had of course noted Ikeo’s new curves as well as the increase in the volume of her nipples, but the prolactin tests carried out in the lab in Phnom Penh had proved negative, we has then concluded that the forced inaction caused by the Covid situation was harmful to the curves of our beautiful elephant…
Yet, on the night of 25 to 26 December 2021, Ikeo gave birth to a beautiful 96-kilogram baby.
The story could have gone very badly as the baby elephant was initially found alone in the morning on the edge of the forest. Caught by neighbours, she was later violently attacked by her mother who was still traumatised by the solitary birth and who no longer recognised the smell of her baby.
The first days were therefore particularly chaotic, with a lot of anxiety and work for the whole team who were present around the clock at Noëlle’s bedside, bottle feeding her, sleeping by her side and doing their best to allow the mother-daughter relationship to start serenely.
Different strategies were tried, some progress was made and then the Katieng forest was the place where the miracle happened, left to themselves under the vigilance of the mahouts, Ikeo and Noëlle were able to create the link and the little one began to suckle her mother who serenely ate the wild plants appropriate to her condition.
It had taken eight days…
Since then, everything has improved, Noëlle’s weight increases steadily, she is more and more lively and agile, uses her trunk better and better, makes a lot of mischief and spreads joy all around her.
This is exactly what the chief monk of the Wat O Cheng pagoda in Ratanakiri had promised us on the third day of Noelle’s birth, “this little girl will survive, she has a very high “boramey”, and will bring happiness and prosperity to all those who take care of her.
Every day Noëlle spends all day in the forest with her mother, learning what to eat and not to eat, how to protect herself from the heat and ultimately, how to be an elephant.
The health of a baby is like a small candle in the breeze, it is up to us to protect it with all our strength, we therefore work in constant liaison with the best elephant specialists to be able to face the upcoming challenges.
