A Zookeepers Life #4 It's all about Basil

I have mentioned someone very special in my previous posts that I would now like to fully introduce you to and share his story- Basil a 2 and half year old West African Pygmy Goat.

6th June 2015

This is the day I will never forget firstly because this is the day I joined the zoo community but also this is the day I met an animal that I would grow to love so much however, at first, he was not in my good books. As I was new and a work experience my senior keepers would use me to do their “dirty work” regularly so they didn’t have to. Basil was born on the 3rd April 2015 and was 2 months old when I met him. The reason Basil did not make my good books for a long time was because him, his brother and his cousin would escape their enclosure EVERY 5 SECONDS and we were receiving countless of reports of escaped goats, trapped goats, goats are ruining the herb garden, goats are trapped in the fence line, goats are running wild all over the zoo (they weren’t they were happy staying in the area eating everything in sight) they were complete sods. Going back to my first day for at least 3 hours I was in and out of hawthorn bushes being spiked, scratched, trapped on branches because these three were giving me the run around. This then went on until the boys were around 6 months old and too fat to get through the fence! You may be wondering, why didn’t they just change the fencing? It isn’t that easy; the exhibit would have to close and the animals would need to be moved to fix the issue and there’s nowhere for all those animals to go. So, we just had to put up with members of the public frantically running over panicking that there’s a goat kid stuck when in fact Basil and his mates are just having a great time outside their exhibit.

July 2015

This is where mine and Basils lives changed forever, I stood and watched the other keepers regularly doing their keeper experiences with children who had to do target training as part of their day and watch as the keepers got bashed by 13 goats, kids got knocked over, food flying everywhere and I thought how could I make this easier? I decided to take Basil on as a project under the watchful eye of my head of section and start simple walking on a lead and target training him.
Target training is where you have a stick with a ball on the end (usually red coloured) and the animal needs to touch the ball with their nose, you then use a clicker to say, “Good job” and then you feed the animal within 3 seconds. Eventually the animal will follow that target stick to the ends of the earth to receive their reward.
Basils training went one step further where I brought him out of his exhibit and he had to learn to train on a rock formation. I kept him on his lead throughout of this training and we began small steps of just touching and following the target over the rock formation until one day one of my colleagues who’s very laid back and I mean very laid back said “take his lead off”, me with the wide eyes staring back at her questioning whether I should or not replied “He’s only been doing this a few weeks” and she told me to just get on with it as he won’t leave my with a huge bucket of food. Reluctantly I took his lead off and Basil ran for cover in the Hazel bushes and started eating away to my colleague’s amusement. After a few bucket shakes of the food he eventually came out and started to train and since this day we have never looked back. Over the next 6 months Basil and I trained 3 times a week and once every couple of weeks with a keeper experience under my watch, he was amazing and every child that met him loved him.

What is he trained to do

Now that Basil can target train to a tee, I have taken the target stick away and replaced it with hand gestures. Basil is to walk and follow my hands at all times unless I ask him to stop, he climbs on anything I ask him to, climbs through small gaps, stands up to show his stomach, lifts up his front feet with simple “left” and “right” commands, he can back up, and he can also stand still on a station when required. You may think why does he do all that? It’s simple, Everything Basil does is all to do with veterinary treatment and husbandry practices, by being able to get up close to Basil and pick up his feet for trimming without him worrying, ask him to stand up so we can see his genitalia if needed and to see his stomach is clear of any problems, walk around to show if he is lame or sore on his feet as examples. All this was put to the test this year.

March 2017

This is something I will never forget in my career, the prospect of losing an animal that I have developed such a close bond with that I didn’t expect to. In March 2017 Basil developed a lump on the side of his face that was painful to touch but didn’t affect his behaviour and willingness to train with me. The rule with any zoo is that the vet isn’t called straight away and usually the animal is given 24 hours to improve the reason behind this is sometimes getting the vet out straight away can cause unnecessary stress upon the animal as restraining an animal for a stranger that smells and acts different can be very scary for them and could even be fatal, also sometimes problems like this can arise and go down just as quickly. Basil was of course given 24 hours and although his behaviour didn’t change the lump also didn’t so the vet was called. I attended all the visits from this point to ensure Basil felt safe as it is no surprise if I was around he felt much more confident. The vet came and myself and a colleague restrained basil as the vet cut into the lump, it was obvious that it was very painful and that was because this lump was a rather large abscess that I have never seen so much puss come out of a wound like that before, it was unbelievable. Basil was given a course of antibiotics and pain relief for a week to see if it helped – it didn’t. Sadly, with ruminant species like Basil, the rumen (the first chamber in their stomach) does a fantastic job at breaking substances down and in most cases drugs that are trying to help them are broken before they are absorbed so sadly nothing was helping Basil other than the pain relief. Basil has a multitude of swabs and tests done to see if anything was showing and sadly nothing was. Throughout all this trauma he was still training with me and I vowed to take no part in the restraining and cleaning of his wound and it’s just as well I didn’t because it was clear that Basil found this part of his life very painful and stressful and refused to be caught by anyone other than me. Watching Basil go through this daily was incredibly heart-breaking as well as seeing him lose weight (he was a little chubby anyway so this was drastic) and becoming frightful I hated it.

In May 2017, a second lump came up on the other side of his face that was symmetrical to the other side, it was decided that Basil was to be taken to the vet surgery to have x-rays to see if anything showed with his teeth. A probe was put into the wound whilst he was under anaesthetic and the photographs were taken but sadly the probe only went so far into his face and it showed nothing on the x-rays about his teeth causing a problem – we were at a loss again.

The thing is, there is not a lot of research into farm animal’s teeth and mouths that the vets could be sure of and because their mouths do not open very far you couldn’t see far enough up there to know if there was anything going on.
Over the course of the next few months, Basil faced constant prodding and poking from both staff and vets trying to understand what is going on that in May it was decision time whether we call it a day or do we carry on trying to fix him and to do more x-rays? By this point, basil began to scream through treatments of having his face cleaned out which that noise would go right to his stomach and more and more puss developing in both sides of his face, a huge difference in weight, and a huge behavioural change to everyone but me I was ready to say goodbye. They went ahead to try one more set of x-rays and I took him up to the vet room and on the way, we took our time jumping on benches and doing the behaviours we had learnt together as well and stopping for a small cuddle more preparing myself for the end as they had decided if they find something they may let him slip away under the anaesthetic – nothing could prepare me for this.
Basil was slowly gassed down and he didn’t fight it at all like he did before – this made me feel like he was ready to end the fight – and the x-rays were taken. The probe was put into the wounds again to see if it would show anything this time the vets studied the results and found that two teeth were causing the problems, but now we faced a dilemma how do we operate on his teeth? He’ll be incubated (meaning he will have tubes down his throat) and their mouths don’t open that far, how can they access the teeth? The vet then asked us the question shall we let him go? I looked straight to my head of section, this decision wasn’t mine, I continued to stroke him and talk to him whilst he was under so he knew I was still there. Basil lived another day and he was brought round and he looked for me straight away as soon as he realised where he was and you could see he was relieved.

The Surgery

Over the course of the next week, everyone agreed to go ahead with the surgery and the vets had to decide how to do it- we couldn’t help them with that! I won’t forget my last training session, it is where the next photo was taken. I was completely heartbroken and frightened to lose my best friend, the animal I had developed such a huge bond with, the animal that calls for me when he sees me and no one else, the animal that will literally do anything for me, run to me when called, perform the demonstrations for students with me, teach me things, brighten my day, make me feel so much better about things when I was feeling low or worried, the animal I literally wake up every day to go and see, the animal I have given up my days off to be with him at vet visits or when he was poorly. I didn’t sleep that night
The next morning it was my day off and I drove to the zoo with his collar and lead in hand and walked him to the van and we set off for the vets. As we got there the vet performing his surgery told us exactly what would be happening – I was horrified. They were to cut through the sides of his mouth on both sides, remove the teeth and stitch him back up, sounds easy? But it wasn’t and the chance of him developing an infection in his cheeks is huge due to how much goats salivate. I put him in the stable and stayed with him a while waiting for the surgery to take place. Sadly, the vet in question was called away to an emergency which meant I had to leave him there, I had to say good bye and leave him. It was likely he wasn’t coming home.

1:30pm

Driving home was horrific, how I didn’t have an accident I will never know, all I could think of was my little mite at the vets scared and well alone. The girl who performed is surgery absolutely loved him so that was some consolation right? I received a phone call at 1:30pm and was told to sit down, this is it he’s dead I thought but it was just to tell me the surgery went well, he was awake and very angry about being at the vets but we would be there over night for 24-hour monitoring but so far, they were happy. I was told that he could still be put to sleep if he develops and infection overnight.

He didn’t

My little fighter returned to the zoo the very next day, still drugged to the high heavens but he was home. Over the course of the next few weeks was still so difficult and we went through one more test. He got an infection. Now by this point Basil had already had 7 antibiotics tried on him and failed, we had all decided enough was enough and I said to my boss I want him to be put to sleep I couldn’t take it anymore. Basil was in pain, Basil was suffering, he couldn't take one more clean on his face and I could no longer look at him knowing how much he was suffering but the vet had one more drug to try...

November 2017

Basil is now fully recovered. The drug that was tried last worked wonders and the wound recovered very quickly. Basil will always have scar tissue in the first infection sites and you can sometimes see the lines where his face was cut into. Basil has psychological scars from the whole ordeal with certain members of staff and some vets, he struggles with restraining and it did set his training back massively but our bond has never changed. Basil and I are very close and I go to work every day just to see his face, I will forever and continue to give up lunch breaks and days off to be there for him. We are not supposed to have favourites and I have massively learnt my lesson from the experiences I have had with Basil and when that day does come I will be heartbroken but I hope I am there for him to comfort him. I will never be this close to another animal again he has stolen my heart forever.

I hope you enjoyed reading about Basil. I decided to dedicate this post to his story, I will continue the species profiles tomorrow.

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