you know at first it was a little touch-and-go but now it's just like
taken off when we didn't move her into her holding space what was closer to the
adults and she had her soaking pool set up with her laughs and everything yeah
one of the big goals was like one start building some independence with her once
she was healthy and able to start spending a little bit a time alone there
was always one of her goals to get her comfortable alone so that was something
that we took really slowly and kind of built her confidence and let her get
comfortable with that on her own time once we didn't think someone needed to
be cuddling her all night long I would step away for a few hours I would keep
my honor but just not be like right next to her and then it got to where she we
knew she was okay so I would step out stay out of the room and just check in
on her we finally got her like her nice soaking pool all set up and it was
heated and you know thermo regulated and the only only real issue was like all
right she has to be able to get in and out of it on her own without supervision
and so he set up four little ramps and you know we had padding on the floors
around it in case she did fall or take a tumble and then once we realize that you
know she's basically sleeping through the night and she's fine
when I'm not there so we felt comfortable leaving her having the
soaking pool with her 24/7 was a big deal because hippos need to be in the
water their skin is so unique and you know it's two inches thick for the under
layers but the epidermis the outermost layer is actually really thin and they
can lose water really really easily which means they can dehydrate really
quickly at one point once she had her special little area she lived in she had
her her rectangle pool and her matted flooring and everything and she could
you know go up and down the ramp all by herself
all that was really important but I remember I was like well the big hippos
really love to play with the hose let's see what she does because you know why
not and she opened her mouth just like an adult hippo and went right towards
the hose and just sat under it my favorite times being hurt I don't
know embrace being a real hippo so I think every every one of those
milestones was just her telling us over and over again like I'm healthy and I
know how to be a hippo
every bottle she took that was encouraging you start off with you know
one human bottle and then you go to okay maybe it's two and I believe there was a
picture where there was maybe six sitting in front of her and then you're
thinking okay what's the next sized bottle up we're in princess and they're
gonna go to livestock type bottles so maybe there was a lamb bottle and the
largest on the market is the calf bottle and she had several of those I believe
three or four now there was a taller calf bottle so basically it held more
and so we got to the point where it was two and they were very tall bottles it
was weird to go back and look at the bottle yeah she was up to four gallons
of milk a day she's fed three times a day right now we're in the weaning
process so we've introduced several months ago we started introducing the
hippo adult food on a small scale to try to get her to understand that
so having mom preaches some hay can then give some of those good bacteria from
mom to the child it's a way for babies to inoculate themselves so they kind of
get the gut flora going we're giving it to her
as as a sterile probiotic but to get it naturally from the parents is a good
thing so all that stuff plays into a role of her developing her her gut flora
inside of her we started fairly early just giving a little bit of this and a
little bit of that things that may be an adult hippo wouldn't eat but might
encourage a young animal to consume our hippos love their beet pulp and so we
take the beet pulp and we soak it a little and it for whatever reason they
love that so you know offering a little bit of that to Fiona
she then turned around and said oh well I I like this and then over time knowing
you know seeing it there seeing the adult hippos BB and Henry
eating the hay and the grain pellets that we have and the beet pulp or maybe
a little bit of lettuce she then got that into her to say okay I'm gonna
consume that you know I think her whole world's gonna change when she's realized
that she likes solid food I think I just can't open this whole new world of oh my
god dude thank you I can see her that definitely gone crazy
it's really normal and sometimes I was like ready to put her in the bigger
pools before anyone else was there before we actually were able to I guess
it was very important though to take things slow because there was no salad
water that was really exciting watching her just make progress
little things like folding her clothes you know that was such a struggle early
on we had the weird dive responses where she was holding her breath and she
shouldn't have been and her lungs were underdeveloped so when she was really
little we worried about like it's actually gonna do in the water it's
gonna be able to hold her breath or she can always have to stay at the surface
but she bit it all worked out okay everything seems to developed fine she
can hold her breath for at least two minutes out this plane himself as much
as I worried about a lot of different things once we were to the point that
she was progressing I was never worried about her in the water she did so well I
think my favorite moment of like she's got this it was when we had her in
really deep water like six or seven feet deep water and she was underwater and we
didn't know if she's gonna be strong enough to push herself up so we were
increasing the water just by one foot at a time and what Fiona did was she
misjudged and she pushed up from the bottom and didn't make it to the surface
and then she just very calmly lent herself float down and pushed up again
and made to the surface and that moment was just like oh yeah cuz she's a hippo
they do have a lot of fat but hippos are really dense and they think they cannot
float and it's really fun to watch her when she pops up to the top and then
sometimes she just goes down really really slowly you just see her sink yeah
we did have Jenner dive safety officer kind of acclimate her to the equipment
in the indoor pools initially just so that she didn't freak out that there's a
human with a weird outfit on it was really funny the first day that we had
her in with the dive with the divers the divers in there and their masks and
gloves and everything and Fiona goes to the one and sees this
person she hasn't no way this this monster of scuba gear and everything she
just was terrified and so you know we kind of took a couple steps back at the
diver take off her goggles take off her gloves talk to her so that
you know it's like okay that you know this person it's someone that you've
known your entire life once she kind of saw that was a person and all that stuff
she got a little bit braver went and checked her out and then they started to
play and had a great time underwater and baby steps literally so yeah it seemed
to work and then when we did a ton exhibit I don't know that she even
really paid any attention to them so it's interesting to think about the
water scenario because if Fiona had been born on time healthy full-term she
probably would have been born in the indoor pools at the temperature of the
water that they're at and we wouldn't have batted an eye if she had been born
in those conditions she would have been able to handle it she's tough babies do
that but since fiona was a preemie thermoregulation has always been a
challenge with her so early on we really had to monitor the water temperature we
didn't want to put her in a pool and even if it was a few degrees colder than
her body temperature that would mean she would have to exert energy staying warm
in that environment which we didn't want we wanted all of her energy focus on
developing muscle and growing and just being and staying healthy
so yeah early on we had the pools heated to a lovely 98 to a hundred degrees and
then as she got bigger and healthier and we got more confident that she could
start to handle colder temperatures we kind of scale it back little by little
probably not more than a few degrees each week and it wasn't until about I
don't know maybe the 80 degree mark that the the keeper staff started to feel it
too we were like this is kind of chilly it went from being fun and enjoyable to
being like oh this is kind of miserable now but Fiona could handle it like she
was like I got this you guys are wimpy um so she did fine she did great all the
way up through the progression of decreasing the temperature all the way
to I think 65 degrees was our gold temperature because that was roughly
that temperature of the outdoor exhibit at the time the water was probably one
of the biggest hurdles but his biggest things better deal with and we
mostly monitored her weight games again so if she had stopped increasing him
weight if like the calorie stayed the same that exercise stayed the same if
everything else is staying the same but she could started to lose weight that
would have been an indication to us like okay her body's having to exert a ton of
energy to stay warm so we wanted to introduce Fiona to the outdoor pool
while she was still with humans because we could control that better and
be there in case she got herself into any trouble because it was so deep and
we didn't know if she was really strong enough to bounce all the way up from the
deepest part of pool it's about nine feet down there so again as
overprotective parents we had I don't know like a dozen people out there in
that large pool but we did have obviously divers in the water to make
sure that she could get to the surface and then a few of us won wetsuits as
well we all felt so much better having the dive team in there with her just in
case because you know we'd been in the indoor pools quite a bit and we kind of
maxed out at about six feet six and a half feet deep there's a chance that she
can't get up to nine feet but we showed her where the shallow ends were we had
all the people in there to help if necessary there was no other way to
practice other than like all right if you could handle that hopefully can
handle this we decided that if she tried two times to get to the top of the water
and couldn't that's when we would intervene and have somebody push her to
the top she's a great like we never had to intervene really it might have taken
her two tries when she was first bigger figuring it out to propel herself up
strongly enough but she was a champ like we were on their business just like hey
guys I got this I know what I'm doing but once we got a row a little bit of
that fear I mean she was having a good ol time she ain't care and so we had
everything you needed out there and we probably could have done it with no one
else she was like I got this no big deal we're lucky their instincts are like
written right into their DNA and she just knew what to do she was like I got
this getting her out and Su you know the exhibit pool for everybody to see and
swim in with her there's nothing better than I've ever done
but now it was so fun glasses was something that animals would experience
in the wild it's not a natural thing so the first time they see it sometimes are
like wait a second are we sharing space can I get through that how did you get
over there so early on especially with Fiona's affinity for people she loves
people she would see them on the other side of the glass and just kind of focus
on trying to get to them eventually she's a smart cookie though she learned
like okay I guess I can't get over there and she's like well you're over there
I'm over here I'm gonna do my thing but there have been a lot of little things
that we've had to acclimate her to very slowly on this exhibit I mean early on
it was like we just day by day and hoping like you see ever she ever gonna
be healthy is she ever gonna be able to go home with other hippos is she ever
gonna have a normal life for a suit hippo and seeing her out there on
exhibit for that first time and having so many of team Fiona therefore it was
like this big culmination of like oh yeah this feels really good this is all
worth it every every bit of blood sweat and tears that went into it hundred
percent birthday