Episode 18 Animal Park


Episode 18

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Hello and welcome to Animal Park. I'm Kate Humble...

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..and I'm Ben Fogle. And we're up on the roof of Longleat House.

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And it is extremely impressive.

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38,000 square feet, and these chimneys,

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and there are 99 of them, have all been hand-crafted from Bath stone.

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But I think the most special thing about being up here, are the views across the estate.

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They are spectacular. We'll be bringing you stories

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from not around the house but the entire safari park. Coming up today -

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A life and death situation when the vet has to perform an emergency operation.

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There's the before... and the after, when I find out how to turn eggs into chicks.

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And we'll discover what Mike, Michelle

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and Little Mandu the marmoset make of the world's favourite pongs.

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But now, across the safari park, the keepers

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are always trying to find ways to enrich the lives of their animals.

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That could be building a climbing frame for the pygmy goats,

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hanging up unusual food for the giraffes to browse,

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or making a giant scratching post for the lions to play with.

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As one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the gorillas need plenty of mental stimulation.

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Keeper Michelle Stevens is constantly trying to come up with something to keep them interested.

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It's very much like trying to stimulate young child.

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You've always got to be on the ball with them,

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you always have to think of new ideas to keep them entertained.

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And that's quite a large part of the job.

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To keep our gorillas enriched we have a TV in the house which is quite unusual.

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They seem to enjoy it.

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It gives some things to look at.

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It also gives them feed enrichment as well.

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We scatter food around the island and create little puzzles

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for them to fathom as well.

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Anything to increase the amount of time they forage for their food,

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which is what they do in the wild,

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that is what we have to try and replicate in captivity.

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Nico the silverback male, and Samba the female, are both complicated characters.

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There's always something to learn with gorillas and they're always learning something about you.

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It's a constant relationship which is building all the time.

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They get to know you and you get to know them and their little habits as well.

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I've only been there for two years and I'm still learning all the time.

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Michelle has also expanded her education recently with a specialist animal management course.

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In her studies she's heard of an experiment

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that was done to see if primates recognize images of themselves.

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Researchers found that gorillas were sometimes fascinated by their reflection in a mirror.

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So this morning Michelle's trying it with Nico, to see if it gets him thinking.

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NICO GRUNTS

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That sort of noise is what he makes very rarely, when he watches chimpanzees on TV.

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So whether he's thinking, "This is another silverback looking at me, I'm territorial," or, my guess is,

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that he knows it is him, and he's just reacting to it.

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It might wind him up as well if he could see himself all the time, so...

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But now,

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that's a reaction...

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That's kind of an aggressive reaction, showing the teeth, making

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himself look really big, so I think he's probably getting a little bit agitated.

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Showing who's boss at the moment, I think.

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Hmm?

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'But he has come back for another look...

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'he's really quite interested.'

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'So Michelle's trying something else.

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'Nico sees the sea lions every day,

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'but what will he make of them on video?

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'No reaction. What about other animals?

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'Not interested.

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'But he sits up when Longleat's Rhesus Macaque monkeys come on.'

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It just looks like he is really concentrating on the TV.

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It just sort of...

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he's really focusing on something, trying to work it out, I think.

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Trying to make out what it is.

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It seems to me that he knows it's a primate.

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Because he seems to respond to this and not to sea lions or the horses.

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'So, what will the gorillas make of a video of themselves?

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'Hopefully, they will find it stimulating viewing.'

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I took a video of the gorillas and showed it back to them and they were quite receptive to it.

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They did actually what it quite intently, especially Nico again.

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He sat with arms crossed and watched the whole thing.

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I showed him other videos of other things and he has not shown

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any interest. He has actually walked away. So I think he knows it's him.

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It is hard to know what Nico's thinking, but he is glued to the telly.

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HE GRUNTS

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That's the same noise that we were hearing when we showed him the mirror.

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He's probably just interested to see what he looks like.

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He probably recognises the logs and everything as well and the actual island.

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'But suddenly, something breaks the spell.'

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HE HITS THE WALL

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That was a good reaction.

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He's just basically getting a bit agitated and little bit...

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unnerved and he wants it to end, I think.

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In fact, it's time to go out for the day anyway.

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The gorillas were fascinated with themselves on video,

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even if Nico decided in the end that he didn't like that show.

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It's a really good response, especially with the mirror as well.

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I didn't think they'd be that interested, to be honest.

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I knew they'd have a look but didn't think it would keep their attention for that long.

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They are creatures that do recognise their own reflection and they're very intelligent.

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It's everything I thought it would be, actually.

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For Michelle it's been an interesting experiment,

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and for the gorillas it may well have given them something to think about for the rest of the day.

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For some of the residents just having a grassy patch

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and a few friends around is all the enrichment they need.

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The guinea fowl is a ground-dwelling bird from Africa,

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and at Longleat, they range free all across the East Africa Reserve.

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And as they go, they lay free-range eggs.

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Ben's gone to find out what happens to them.

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I've come up to the incubation house was Senior Warden Bev Evans.

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And a collection of eggs. What are these actually for...?

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-These are from our guinea-fowl.

-Wow. So they were laid...

-Around the giraffe area.

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-I had to search everywhere for them.

-And why are we here?

-We've brought them to be incubated.

-OK.

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Hiding in here is head of section Mark Tye. Good morning, Mark.

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What is Mark going to do with these?

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Hopefully incubate them if you've got some room?

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-We've got plenty of room.

-What are you looking for with these eggs and what does incubation involve?

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Firstly, what we need to look for straight away is that they're clean and not deformed at all.

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Sometimes you can get calcification not all over the shell which would indicate a poor quality egg.

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These all look pretty good to me.

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And then we need to put them in the machine and 28 days later,

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out pop some chicks.

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So we have a few things there, 28 days is the period it will take

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for a chick to hatch. But why can we not just leave these out and about around the estate?

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One of the reasons is they get predated by crows.

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What a game bird like this will do is lay eggs, one a day over X amount of days.

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The trouble is that crows are really good at finding nests and they just seal the eggs.

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Is this an incubation machine? Is this where they would be put?

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Yes, this is one of the specialist machines.

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This one does turning and controls the humidity as well.

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We can keep that at a set point.

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It turns the eggs every hour. With these eggs...

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I don't know, if you can turn the light out we can see...

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All you can see is just a clear shell with a dark patch in the middle which is the yoke.

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So there isn't a chicken there yet?

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There's not an embryo in there at all at this stage.

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That's what you are looking for initially.

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Just a nice, dark yolk shape.

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-OK.

-But with some eggs over here which is a partridge and doing for Tim...

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Wow, you really are... you are the egg man!

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I am. You might be able to see, all these veins.

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-You can see the dark bits...yes!

-See these veins?

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So is that that the chick forming inside?

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Yes, that's the embryo growing inside.

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What happens is, the first thing you'll see at about 44 days in a partridge is a little heart beat.

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-You will be able to see that?

-You'll see the heart pumping away.

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And from that heart beat all these blood vessels start spreading out.

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The blood vessels have to grow all around the outside and inside the shell.

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And that is then their outer blood supply.

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It's a bit similar to a mammal being connected to the centre.

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-How many eggs do you have?

-We have about 12.

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I don't know how many we are likely to get out of that.

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I would hope about 80%.

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-That's not bad.

-You will always find, particularly with birds that lay lots of eggs, some don't work.

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-Bear in mind, these are guinea-fowl. They are not native to the UK.

-No, these are African.

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How many do you have now?

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-We have 34.

-Do you need more?

-Yes.

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They do spread out a lot because they are good at free-ranging.

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So 34 now, but how many of those eggs will hatch?

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We'll be back later to find out.

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But now, back up in the East African Reserve there's an emergency with the pygmy goats.

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The vet, Duncan Williams has just arrived, and Bev Evans has been called back to help.

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Lily, one of the pregnant nannies, began to go into labour yesterday.

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They think she's got twins.

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But almost 24 hours later, she still hasn't given birth.

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There must be something wrong.

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With a pygmy goat, my hand is a bit too big to get in there.

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If it was a sheep or something you'd be able to lamb it quite easily.

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But I can't do it. I think we will have to do a caesarean.

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So it looks like the only chance to save Lily and her babies

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is to perform an emergency caesarean section.

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There's no time to take Lily to the surgery, so the operation will have to be performed right here.

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The vet needs light, and the brightest place is actually outside in the yard.

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Andy Hayton is here to help.

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He's the keeper in charge of the pygmy goats.

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The problems we've been having this year is that they are all inexperienced mums.

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These are all their first kids. They are not pushing.

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This is a uterine relaxant which makes the caesar a bit easier to do.

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I think if you pop her up there... A bit of antibiotic.

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Duncan's going to use a local anaesthetic because it would

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be very risky to knock Lily out with a general anaesthetic.

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Apart from the increased risk to her, the babies inside would also receive a dose of the drug,

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and if they're already weak, that could be very dangerous.

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I'm going to just do this under a local block which is fine.

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We've given her a little bit of a sedative as well.

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So she's a little bit dopey but not much.

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Lily is a very popular goat, and Bev's the keeper who knows her best.

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Lily's one of our friendliest goats.

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She's always quite pleased to get a bit of attention.

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She looks fine. She's quite calm.

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A little bit dopey because of the sedative.

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But she seems fine.

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But now, Duncan's ready to make the incision.

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OK, just feeling in there for the uterus.

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I'll grab the inside of the uterus.

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It takes just moments to get the first baby out.

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There's no sign of life.

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-It's dead, isn't it?

-Swinging the baby is to clear fluid from the lungs.

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Massaging is to encourage the heart to start.

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Now the second baby is out.

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Still no signs of life.

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But there was never any hope. By the time he starts to do the sutures, Duncan has discovered what happened.

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Unfortunately, the placenta was detached already, so the kids had died in the uterus.

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Probably some time during the night, because she didn't get on with it.

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What we're doing now is just sewing her up.

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We'll sew up the uterus first and then we'll sew up the skin.

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Mothers don't normally die from a caesarean but it can happen

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if they get peritonitis or something but she's perfectly healthy.

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An hour later, Lily is back indoors.

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Bev is sitting with her.

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She's looking surprisingly well considering what she has just been through.

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She was only on a light sedation anyway.

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So she had already stood up and we put her in this giraffe box for now

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to give her a bit of time on her own.

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We've been able to save Lil,

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and she's fine in herself, so that is a bonus.

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So Lily survived, and she was soon on the mend.

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A week later she was well enough to go out, and rejoin the rest of the herd.

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Down in Pets' Corner, Jo Hawthorne is preparing a new kind of enrichment,

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aimed at stimulating what is for many animals the most interesting of all the senses - smell.

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Jo is putting some of our favourite scents, various herbs and spices,

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into a basket to see what the marmosets make of them.

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They've got three Geoffroy's tufted-eared marmosets here -

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a rare species from Brazil.

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Mike and Michelle came to Longleat four years ago

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and now have their two-year-old daughter Mandu living with them.

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Marmosets are part of the monkey family,

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so having something new to keep their minds busy is very important.

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Kate's gone to see if Jo's basket gets them thinking.

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-You've got lavender here.

-Yes, we've got lavender growing in Pets' Corner, and it's got quite a strong smell.

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Nutmeg, which we use for cooking.

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I've tried to stick to things that aren't too...

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kind of...

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..that would actually put them off.

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Like a peppery thing that would make them sneeze.

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Yeah, that you and me wouldn't want to get a noseful of, I tried to stay away from.

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Ginger. Again, that's quite a nice smell - to you and me. I don't know...

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Cinnamon, again going for a really nice natural smell.

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And sage, which is also natural, from plants.

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-So, who knows?

-Who's this?

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-That's Dad.

-That's Dad, Mikey.

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-He's having a good look at the sage on the end there.

-He is, isn't he?

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He can obviously smell it, because he's having a good look.

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Do you think he's rejecting it because there's no food in there?

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It is literally just the powders.

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He might well do.

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There's nothing visibly edible there.

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It might be that he's thinking, "Mm..."

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-Who's this coming up now?

-This is Mandu now.

-This is baby.

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Mandu always comes in after Dad.

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-She's having a look.

-She's definitely having a sniff.

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She's taking the paper!

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Ooh, no, she's...

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-She's definitely curious.

-She is.

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Much more than Dad, actually.

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Oh, she's got some on her nose!

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Oh, she's licking it!

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-Ooh, what's that?

-That's the ginger.

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She's trying to get that off her nose. Poor little thing.

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Bless her.

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-She's had a taste.

-She's tasted it.

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Oh, she's going back for more!

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Nope, leapt it.

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Oh, no, she is, she's having a look.

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She's definitely intrigued by this, isn't she?

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She kind of went to get it off her nose.

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-She didn't recoil in disgust, did she?

-No.

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Mum is staying resolutely inside.

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She's not interested at all.

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She's a bit of a grump like that. She's kind of, whatever they're doing, I don't want to know.

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I tend to find with her, if I'm doing something and I leave it out for days, she'll come in days after

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and come out and look, and go, "That's the deal, is it?"

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Initially she's a bit fearful of things like that.

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She's the sensible one of the three.

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It doesn't surprise me that she hasn't gone anywhere near it.

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-Well...

-A bit of a result.

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It was a bit of a result. It was very interesting.

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Mikey having a look...

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but not having a taste.

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Mandu getting her face in it.

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-Mandu was thinking, "OK, I'll just do it."

-Jo, thank you very much.

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That was fascinating. Go on, Michelle. You can have a try.

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'The scent basket may not have been an instant hit

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'with the whole family, but it has given the marmosets something new to investigate...

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'and that's what enrichment is all about.'

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Over the last four centuries, 13 generations of the Thynne family

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have been doing home improvements on Longleat House.

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Today we're going to investigate the one who's left the biggest mark

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on the interior of the house.

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His name was Alexander Thynne, and he was the fourth Marquess of Bath.

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He inherited Longleat in 1837,

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the same year that Queen Victoria came to the throne.

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After a proper education at Eton and Oxford, Alexander set off

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on what had become de rigeur for the well-bred Englishman,

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the Grand Tour of Europe.

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It had a profound affect on him.

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The present Lord Bath, who has the same name, knows all about it.

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Once he'd done his Grand Tour,

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he saw the magnificent ceilings, the Renaissance ceilings

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in Venice and other places, and he suddenly felt,

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"That is the decor that should be here,"

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because the house was inspired from that period.

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So on the public side the ceilings all changed.

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The public, or state, rooms take up about a third of the house,

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and the lavish ceilings often get comments from the visitors.

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So the house guides, like Rachel Appleby, feature them prominently on their tours.

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Starting with the ceiling above us, we have a very grand ceiling in here.

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The paintings up there came from a Venetian palace,

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they're by the School of Titian,

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bought by the 4th Marquess, instructed by his designer,

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who was a man called Crace, a very important designer.

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Crace helped the 4th Marquess in all these interiors.

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He had a passion for Italy.

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John Dibblee Crace helped the 4th Marquess

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turn nine of the grandest rooms of Longleat

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into a kind of Victorian version

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of some great palace from Renaissance Italy.

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Above us, the ceiling is another of Crace's ceilings.

0:20:380:20:43

The inspiration for this was a palace in Rome. The Palazzo Massimo.

0:20:440:20:49

It was important that the house should make a big impression

0:20:530:20:56

because the 4th Marquess mixed in very grand circles.

0:20:560:21:00

The Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra are seen here

0:21:000:21:04

when they came for a shooting weekend in 1881.

0:21:040:21:07

Alexander, the 4th Marquess, is the tall one on the right.

0:21:070:21:12

And when they all sat down in the state dining room

0:21:120:21:15

the guests were always suitably impressed with the new interiors.

0:21:150:21:19

I think it sums up the Victorians.

0:21:190:21:22

It's dark,

0:21:230:21:26

it's very dramatic, it was meant to cause a stir.

0:21:260:21:30

And I think it probably did.

0:21:300:21:32

What we don't have,

0:21:320:21:35

that the Victorians saw,

0:21:350:21:38

was the atmosphere that this room would have been seen in.

0:21:380:21:42

All those wonderful candles that would have lit this room.

0:21:420:21:47

I think, if we could see it like that today,

0:21:470:21:50

that would be the icing on the cake.

0:21:500:21:52

Alexander, the 4th Marquess, died in 1896,

0:21:520:21:56

and since then the state rooms have remained largely unchanged.

0:21:560:22:01

The next marquess to have as keen an interest in interiors

0:22:010:22:05

was the seventh, also called Alexander.

0:22:050:22:08

But the present Lord Bath's renovations have been limited

0:22:080:22:11

to the private apartments.

0:22:110:22:13

The artwork he's put on the walls

0:22:130:22:15

and ceilings has come not from abroad but from his own mind.

0:22:150:22:18

So far, he's painted murals to decorate almost 20 rooms.

0:22:180:22:24

Recently he's been getting some extra help

0:22:240:22:27

from yet another relative with the same name.

0:22:270:22:30

Well, this is

0:22:330:22:34

what I do in terms of ceilings.

0:22:340:22:37

I'm trying to do them

0:22:370:22:39

in the spirit of the other side that has a lot a Baroque work

0:22:390:22:44

on the ceilings, making them in an ornate Italian style.

0:22:440:22:48

I've been getting my nephew, young Alexander, to do a mosaic

0:22:480:22:54

wherever I have done a mural within the nursery suite and elsewhere.

0:22:540:22:58

All of the ceilings are different.

0:23:020:23:04

They've all been done according to the theme I've suggested.

0:23:040:23:08

I think young Alex has made a very fine job of it.

0:23:080:23:12

I do the actual mural but he does the mosaic work.

0:23:120:23:16

Of course, the best judge of any artistic endeavour is posterity.

0:23:160:23:21

So in a century's time what will people think

0:23:210:23:25

of Lord Bath's contributions to Longleat House?

0:23:250:23:28

I think they certainly will feel that the different generations

0:23:280:23:34

have made their own marks on the decor of the house,

0:23:340:23:38

and decor of the garden and the decor of the park in general.

0:23:380:23:43

I think we've all left our fingerprints around the place.

0:23:430:23:47

I don't think any of us need be worried.

0:23:470:23:49

They're all the same sort of

0:23:490:23:51

messy fingerprints that knit well together.

0:23:510:23:55

A little over a month ago we brought a dozen of these eggs to Head of Section Mark Tye.

0:24:200:24:25

And now, 35 days later, I'm back with Senior Warden Bev Evans and a very smiley face!

0:24:250:24:31

And some of these. Have a look.

0:24:310:24:33

These baby chicks. Of the guinea fowl.

0:24:330:24:36

So how many were eventually born?

0:24:360:24:38

I think we have nine. Out of 12 eggs.

0:24:380:24:41

If the camera just pans down there in the corner, there are the new litter.

0:24:410:24:46

-That's not the term, is it?

-Clutch.

0:24:460:24:48

A clutch of guinea fowl.

0:24:480:24:50

Are you happy with 80 per cent? How many...

0:24:500:24:54

We had 12, so to get nine out is pretty reasonable.

0:24:540:24:58

That's incredible.

0:24:580:24:59

Were they all born over...what sort of gap between each chick?

0:24:590:25:04

They all started hatching...

0:25:040:25:06

well, one hatched two days early and all the rest were all at the same time.

0:25:060:25:11

Is that a problem, premature chicks?

0:25:110:25:13

No, it could have been that, when the eggs were brought to me, one may have been sat on already.

0:25:130:25:19

So it could have been slightly more developed than the others.

0:25:190:25:24

Or, sometimes, you just get that odd one that will be different to the rest.

0:25:240:25:28

Talking of different to the rest,

0:25:280:25:30

there are two little chicks that really stand out in there.

0:25:300:25:34

There's two little grey ones and then all the other colours.

0:25:340:25:37

Why are they different colours?

0:25:370:25:39

To be honest, I don't know. Probably genetics of some description.

0:25:390:25:42

I've had it with pheasant chicks as well.

0:25:420:25:45

You get 99% of them all the same colour and then you get a couple of different-coloured ones.

0:25:450:25:50

And how much maintenance has to go on with the chicks? Is there a lot of hands-on stuff?

0:25:500:25:54

No, to be honest, once they have hatched out and we can see

0:25:540:25:57

they've all dried out nicely, because they're very wet when they first come out,

0:25:570:26:02

once they've dried out we can put them out under a lamp.

0:26:020:26:06

So, Bev, it must be very exciting for you.

0:26:060:26:08

-You have 35...

-34.

-34 wild guinea fowl.

0:26:080:26:13

To have a whole clutch of extra ones to add to that...

0:26:130:26:17

Definitely. And all sorts of colours, which will bring variety.

0:26:170:26:21

They range like a lot.

0:26:210:26:23

So even 34 is quite a large number, because they're so wide-ranging it doesn't seem that much.

0:26:230:26:28

-It is very much hands-off, isn't it?

-Oh, yes. We feed them in the morning, and they get up to their own devices.

0:26:280:26:34

What sort of age will these chicks be able to...head out?

0:26:340:26:38

Really once they're getting up to full size and able to roost as well.

0:26:380:26:41

-Once they're able to get up into the trees away from predators then we let them free-range.

-Fantastic.

0:26:410:26:47

Well, Bev, Mark, congratulations, if that's the word.

0:26:470:26:50

Let's hope that these guinea fowl thrive here in Wiltshire.

0:26:500:26:54

We're up in Monkey Jungle with Deputy Head Warden Ian Turner.

0:27:080:27:12

And just over here are the water buffalo, really living up to their name, Ian!

0:27:120:27:16

I don't think I've ever seen them in the water before!

0:27:160:27:19

It has to be warm. Today's a day when you want to go in and join them because it is hot.

0:27:190:27:24

And this is how they get their name, is it?

0:27:240:27:26

Yes. The water buffalo. They like to splash and keep cool.

0:27:260:27:30

Because it's so hot.

0:27:300:27:32

Presumably, if there were lots of flies or biting insects around, that's a good way of escaping them?

0:27:320:27:36

That's right. It keeps all the flies off, yes. The only bit you can see is the head.

0:27:360:27:41

And there...

0:27:410:27:42

He just flicked it over his head!

0:27:420:27:45

-I'm very tempted to join them but I don't think it would be a good idea.

-I'm not sure it would!

0:27:450:27:50

Ian, thank you very much.

0:27:500:27:52

Sadly, that's all we have time for on this programme but here's what's coming up on the next Animal Park.

0:27:520:27:57

Up at the Wolf House Freda's had a new litter of cubs

0:27:570:28:01

but will all of them survive when she brings them outside?

0:28:010:28:05

The Eland herd is growing at quite a pace - we'll be meeting the new arrivals.

0:28:050:28:11

And we visit Howlett's Safari Park in Kent,

0:28:110:28:14

where Longleat's Michelle Stevens gets up close and personal

0:28:140:28:18

with their over-friendly elephants.

0:28:180:28:21

So don't miss the next Animal Park.

0:28:260:28:29

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:28:450:28:47

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0:28:470:28:48

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