Enormous elephants need a lot of food and that means there is daily deliveries of fruit, bananas, melons and pumpkins . All of which need to be unloaded, prepared and given out to the animals. The elderly and young need to have softer fruit that their teeth and stomachs can cope with better , and to make it easier for them to digest.
Whenever a delivery arrives, if you are around you help to unload it, one afternoon it took 14 of us two hours to unload a truck of melons. There should have been more there to help but some of the volunteers seem to have a knack of disappearing if they do not like the look of a job!
Pumpkins these are fed whole to the elephants who can eat them like that. They are served steamed to the young and elderly elephants.
Bananas these need to be counted as they are unloaded, bunches are counted not individual bananas, in one load we had 1850 bunches. Green banana are fed to the elephants who can cope, the softer yellow bananas are fed to the elderly and young.
Melons these are fed whole to the elephants who can cope, while the elderly and young have their melons peeled and cut into smaller chunks.
Melons and pumpkins need to be washed before they are given to the elephants to make sure there are no pesticides on them. In this photo we are transferring pumpkins from the shelf into a big trough to be washed.
An elephant keeping an eye on us. Some of the elephants are cheeky and sneak up to the elephant kitchen area and help themselves from the shelves.
Washing the pumpkins.
Peeling and chopping the melons.
Some of the yellow bananas are peeled and put into a bucket with rice flour and corn and then made into banana balls. The bananas are mushed up by hand and then formed into the ball shape, if an elephant needs medicine these are hidden within the banana ball.
Banana balls, the skins of the bananas and melons are fed to the buffalo which are also here.
Forming the banana balls.
It takes a lot of time and effort to do all this and the elephants eat them in seconds.
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