Space Farms hosts junior zookeeper day

SUSSEX — Junior Zookeepers Day was held at Space Farms on Saturday for children ages 5 to 15 years old.

Starting off with a talk about animals, the foods they eat, shelter needed and their care, Lori Space Day hopes to jump start a new bunch of zookeepers. Children practiced doing a tiger chuff, which is like a horse blowing raspberries. This is a sound they make when they are happy.

This was the first year the goat herding was done with the junior zookeepers. A human fencepost was made to coral the baby goats as the gates were opened. Four volunteers, Ben Jurewicz of Vernon, Kevin Armstrong of Hamburg, Nicole Whitehead of Wantage and Frank Garruto of Oak Ridge were deputized to be goat herders with their milk bottles in hand. They all made it to their new pen safely.

In the fox den, Ralph a platinum, Tonto a silver and Vixen a goldcross are three of the seven babies. Fox are crepuscular creatures meaning they go out at dawn and dusk.

Prince, a white Elk is in velvet, which is a coating over the antlers and where they get their calcium from. Space Farms original white elk came from Turtle Back Zoo in a trade for a baby buffalo. The baby elks Space Farms have raised are in white, cream and buff colors.

Tiger Lily, a baby Bengal tiger, was born a few weeks ago. Although the junior zookeepers could not touch her as she has not had all of her shots yet and is considered a dangerous animal species. They watched her drink down her bottle of milk and go into her pool for a quick dip in the hot weather. After cutting open frozen bottles of water, the ice chunks were brought to the adult tigers, Tara and Charlie as well as the adult lions A Tilla the Hunk and Missy. They are the fourth generation to be born at the farm.