Indore : In an extraordinary experiment, the last cub at the city zoo got a stepmother – a female dog. The trial was made by senior officials at the Kamla Nehru Prani Sangrahalaya (city zoo), and fed the cub via a female dog.
Zoo officials pointed out that the white tigress, Shivani after mating with a Royal Bengal tiger (B1), gave birth to four cubs last month. However, three out of the four cubs died within 48 hours as the mother picked the cubs wrongly in her jaws and it resulted in the deaths.
Subsequently, zoo staff skilfully saved one of the cubs, which had minor injuries and have since taken care of it. Initially, zoo officials tried to feed the cub via a bottle but there were several problems, and they tried feeding through a goat, and once again there were hurdles.
Senior zoo staff experimented with a female dog and it was well accepted by the cub. According to sources, the female dog is 4-year-old and was brought to the zoo from a farmhouse near Banganga.
“Initially the female dog wasn’t comfortable and so we had to trick her by constantly replacing the cub with her own puppy. Fortunately, she too had a newly born puppy and that helped us. After three-four days the female dog adopted the cub and after 12 days, it doesn’t let the cub move away from her,” said Dr Uttam Yadav, in-charge at the Kamla Nehru Prani Sanghralaya.
The cub is now 29-days-old and has a higher survival rate, and over the next few weeks should also be able to eat chicken soup and allied nutrition.
STEPMOM’S DIET
Dr Yadav of city zoo highlighted the diet of the female dog – Gimmy, which is five eggs, about half a kg of liver, half litre of milk, five-six slices of bread and biryani for dinner.
POSSIBLE SHIFT
Dr Yadav said that the cub after growing sufficiently may be shifted to the same cage with its parents, Shivani and B1 and other tigress—Diya and Sita. For now, the cub views the female dog, Gimmy as his mother.
