Tiger, located in the center of rehabilitation of the village Alekseevka Primorsky Krai, today released into a spacious aviary. Nothing threatens health of a four-month kitten. The Amur Tiger Center continues to provide financial assistance in its maintenance and treatment.
Two weeks have passed since, in the village of Filippovka, Khasansky District, one of the local residents found in his yard a weakened tiger cub, in an extreme degree of exhaustion. The animal was taken to the Center for the rehabilitation and reintroduction of tigers and other rare animals in the village of Alekseevka. During this time, the state of a four-month female has noticeably improved, and at the moment there is no threat to her health.
Over these days, experts examined the striped patient, conducted a rapid test for infectious diseases, which showed a negative result. At the time of the last inspection on January 3, the tiger cub weighed 19 kilograms.
Today, after being kept in a heated quarantine block, the tiger cub was transferred to a spacious aviary. Judging by her appearance, the Amur tiger female got the missing kilos, her health was restored. All this speaks of her well-being. Experts continue to monitor the behavior of the animal.
“She has already begun to be interested in the new aviary and surrounding objects, that is, it is not completely closed, behaves like a healthy animal. In relation to a person, she is cautious, shows defensive behavior, which is typical for predators,” commented Ekaterina Blidchenko, senior researcher at the Land of the Leopard Federal State Budget Organization, veterinarian of the PROO "Tiger Center".
A tigress feeding schedule has already been developed and approved up to July 2016, indicating the required volume of meat products and the amount of “live food” (rabbits, spotted deer, wild boars) necessary to train the skills of hunting the female. The Amur Tiger Center, which from the very beginning assisted in the maintenance and treatment of the tiger cub to the Center for the Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Tigers and Other Rare Animals (The PROO "Tiger Center"), provided the necessary funding to complete this schedule.
“The process of rehabilitation and preparation for the release of tigers into the wild is quite long, because in nature the Amur tiger young begin an independent life when, on average, they reach the age of 18 months. And the optimum time of release into the wild nature is late spring, when hoofed animals bring their offspring, badgers and raccoon dogs move away from winter sleep. Therefore, it will be possible to produce, if the tiger cub has the right hunting skills and a steady human avoidance reaction, during preparation, not earlier than the late spring or summer of 2017. So everyone who participates in this process has a lot of work to do,” commented Sergey Aramilev, Director of the Primorsky branch of the Amur Tiger Center.
At the moment, feeding a four-month-old kitten of the Amur tiger occurs 1-2 times a day, when in the first days the staff had to feed the animal 4-5 times in small portions so that food could be absorbed in a weakened body. Today, the diet of young females is venison and beef on the bone, as well as live rabbits. According to the staff of the Rehabilitation Center, several rabbits are released at once in an open-air cage, so that the tiger cub can feed itself whenever it wishes. This is done to maintain the hunting instinct of a wild animal.