Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

cow

Love a Moo Moo Day

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Amazing sanctuary friend and supporter, Monica Best, is sponsoring a day of sanctuary in a new celebration honoring our dear bovine family, Honey and her daughter, Meredith, and Betsy and her son, Nutmeg, and well, moo moos everywhere!

Monica is hoping this first annual Love a Moo Moo Day will allow everyone to get to know the lovely hoofed animals that share the sanctuary.

You can learn all about the four cattle by clicking on their individual pages from the cattle page on the website. They have a very interesting past, and we feel so very fortunate that we are able to care for them here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest while they happily keep the grass trimmed. This summer, we’ll be giving them access to even more of the sanctuary property!

Nutmeg is now a big steer, it’s difficult for us to imagine him this size when he was born at Farm Sanctuary’s California shelter:

Baby Nutmeg nursing from Betsy (photo from Farm Sanctuary)
Nutmeg (left), his mom Betsy (right) at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Nutmeg is much bigger than mom Betsy now, but he’s still a mama’s boy in the best way:

For her part, Betsy is a mom at heart and spends a lot of her time grooming her herd mates. The humans will do in a pinch:

Betsy licking J.B.

Honey, on the other hand, would prefer that the humans keep the appropriate social distance from her, unless they have some particularly valuable food, in which case she will lower herself to come closer.

Meredith (left), Honey (right)

Her daughter Meredith likes the occasional scratch, but has an independent streak. When we are watching the bovine family from the office, Meredith is often off doing her own thing.

Meredith

Just like their primate sanctuary counterparts, each of these four hoofed friends have individual personalities and charm!

Thank you to Monica for setting up a day to love them!

 

 

Moms

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Most of you reading this probably know that Annie, Foxie, Jody, Missy, and Negra were used as breeders during their years in biomedical research. Each of them gave birth to multiple babies in the laboratories, all of whom were removed from their respective mothers at or shortly after birth and brought up in “nurseries” in the labs.

That’s the reason we celebrate Jody’s birthday on Mother’s Day, as we did last weekend. Jody had the most pregnancies and the greatest number of children who she did not have the opportunity to raise and love and dote on, as we suspect she would have.

Though not chimpanzees, we do, however, now have two moms with their children at the sanctuary! Moms Betsy and Honey originally lived at a dairy, where they too were probably bred multiple times. The last children that they had were able to grow up with their respective mothers at Farm Sanctuary. And grow they did!

Nutmeg, like Burrito, is the one male of his group. You don’t often see adult dairy steers because the males are basically unwanted byproducts of the dairy industry. When you do see them, they are big, and Nutmeg is no exception.

He’s about twice the size of his mom, Betsy, but he still looks to her for comfort and nurturing.

Meredith, though she’s a cow not a steer, also towers over her mom, Honey. They both seem to share an independent streak.

It’s really nice to be able to have this little family here at the sanctuary and to know these moms were able to raise their kids from birth. You can learn more about the cattle by clicking on their individual pages from the main cattle page and you can now become a Bovine Buddy too!

Sanctuary Wildlife

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Things have been quite busy around here lately with construction and the usual springtime projects so like any rational person I prioritized my task list, divided it into manageable pieces, and proceeded to tick them off one by one in a steady and methodical manner. Just kidding. Instead I became consumed with an unrelated and largely unnecessary project: decorating the new sanctuary bathroom!

We decided that the bathroom should be filled with photos of wildlife taken on the sanctuary property so we went about searching through our archives. I enjoyed this so much I thought I’d share them with you. Long-time blog readers will recognize most of them.

Above is a photo of one of a pair of coyotes that built a den in the old irrigation canal just below the sanctuary residence. For a few months we would watch them return to the den with freshly caught rodents and the occasional chicken from our careless neighbor’s house.

Below are a couple of mule deer fawns. The deer on the sanctuary property are unbelievably tame. Some of the does will even challenge our 85-lb pit bull to a fight through the fence, which to my mind seems just a bit reckless. The herd doesn’t travel very far from our 90 acres so we get the pleasure of watching them year after year and seeing them grow up, sometimes to have fawns of their own.

The sanctuary has a number of distinct wetland areas owing to several springs that flow year round. In an area that doesn’t receive any measurable rain for the summer months, these become oases for many species. But some animals have discovered the benefits of moving into the irrigated gardens surrounding the chimp house. This guy found a perfectly nice grape leaf that gets a light rain every night from 2:00 to 2:15 a.m. As long as he doesn’t go in the chimp house, it’s the perfect set up. If he goes in, he will be Negra’s dinner.

The fence posts and wildfire sprinklers around the chimp house are popular spots for many birds like this blue bird pair. Here, the male sings his song and boasts of his athleticism and his many achievements.

Some birds take up residence in our barns, like the pigeons, swallows, and this fledgling Steller’s jay who wasn’t angry that I was taking his photo, just disappointed.

The sanctuary’s compost system is now the Grand Central Terminal to a vast network of ground squirrel tunnels. In the spring they are lithe and svelte. After a few months of compost scraps this guy is going to need to widen his tunnel.

The skies are always filled with raptors, including bald eagles and red-tailed hawks, keeping us under constant surveillance.

No collection of sanctuary wildlife photos would be complete without a photo our beloved and not-so-wild friend, Ellie.

And while cows aren’t wildlife, we’re using the term loosely to mean “not chimps”. Betsy, Honey, Meredith, and Nutmeg are the first four cows to call our sanctuary home and will soon be moving the lush, green pastures surrounding Young’s Hill. We’ll see how they get along with the chimps.

There are a number of animals on the property that we haven’t yet photographed, like cougars, bobcats, and bears, who are typically more elusive. But the plump hoary marmot that lives beneath the front porch of the upper cattle barn is just begging for his picture to be taken. We’ll have to find some room in the foyer for the rest of our wildlife family.