On May 24, 2006, our Sumatran tiger Soyono gave birth to a litter of three cubs. Keeper Marie Magnuson follows the cubs in this diary.
June 23, 2006
As I'm sure you all know by now, Soyono, our female Sumatran tiger, gave birth to three cubs on May 24. The first birth was at about 2:45 in the afternoon, when all the keepers were in the office at Great Cats. We just happened to be looking at the monitor at that moment and couldn't believe it! Tigers usually prefer to give birth in the wee small hours of the morning when everything is quiet, and they are sure to be alone. But here Soy was, cleaning off her first cub, with all the keepers, a veterinarian, and our assistant curator in the building. The office is at the opposite end of the building from the cubbing area but the cats can tell who is in the building from the sounds of familiar voices and where they are by the sound of the safety gates opening and closing.
This birth was a little unusual in other respects as well. After Soyono and the cubs' dad, Rokan, bred in January, we started the countdown for the birth. Tigers have a gestation period of 98 to 105 days, give or take a day or two, so we were expecting cubs at the end of April or the beginning of May. We were a little surprised when Soy went into estrus again in February, but we put Rokan and her together again for breeding and pushed back the expected due date to the end of May. When Soyono started to show mammary development in April, we didn't know what to think! We played it safe and started her confinement on the last day of April. As the days passed, she looked more and more ready to give birth, but no cubs arrived. It slowly became clear that the first breeding was not the one, and we would just have to wait. Fortunately, there was a cub cam that was accessible to the Zoo staff, so we could keep an eye on Soyono 24/7 without bothering her. About three or four days before the birth, the cubs dropped and Soy just couldn't get comfortable, so we knew it would be soon. We just didn't think it would start in the middle of the afternoon!
As always, we left mom and her babies alone for the first two weeks. We did very little cleaning, just a quick scrub of the area where Soy ate. Other than this cleaning and going back to the area with food, we stayed away, probably spending less than a total of 15 minutes a day in the cubbing area. We had a monitor in the office so we could see that our new mom had everything under control and didn't need any help from us.
When the cubs were two weeks old, we tempted Soyono outside with a special treat of a rabbit (not alive!), and the keepers and the veterinarians went in to look at the cubs for the first time. Each cub was big and healthy, and we found out that we had two girls and a boy. Soyono and Rokan had had two litters before, and all four cubs from those litters had been boys, so we were very happy to finally have some girls. The National Zoo is part of a Sumatran Tiger SSP (Species Survival Program) through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The SSP makes recommendations about breeding to make sure that the captive population of these highly endangered animals remains healthy. It's kind of hard to have a breeding program if you have nothing but boys, however, so these girls will be a great help. Visitors are already asking if any of these cubs will stay here and we honestly don't know. We all have to wait on the SSP's recommendations.
I have to run now, but will write more soon.
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