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FEATURE: The tragic tale of young fawns
In a tragic incident last month, a retired police officer was apprehended by rangers while trying to smuggle sixteen ten-day-old fawns of desert gazelles that he had purchased through his henchmen in Thar area. They were handed over to the wildlife officer of Mithi, who had no experience in raising or feeding fawns in captivity. He in turn handed them over to the local vet who was equally ignorant about fawn care. The vet tried the usual methods to rear cattle and calves which in no way were applicable to the gazelle fawns. The only characteristic common to all these animals was that their young ones fed on their mothers’ milk. The vet did not realize that wild animals differ a great deal from cattle and other domestic animals. As a result all the sixteen fawns died in two days.
It is a known fact that nearly half of the young ones of grass-eating animals, nearly three fourth of the meat-eating ones and almost all the apes die if not reared on their mother’s milk, which varies greatly from specie to specie. A buffalo calf raised on cow’s milk is likely to die and vice versa. This happens because the mother’s milk contains particular antibodies to fight the bacteria that the specie is likely to be infected with. The newborn’s body takes almost two to three weeks to develop its own antibodies. Fawns suffer from a disease in which the bacteria reaches the blood stream through the cord with which the baby is attached to its mother before birth. Through this cord the fawn receives nourishment from the mother’s blood. Other than this the mother’s defence mechanism also keeps the young animal safe from infectious diseases. The cord breaks at birth and takes a week or more to heal, thereby making the young animal prone to infection. The newborn’s body takes two to three weeks to develop its own antibodies. Bacteria is the major cause of infection in the newborn, who develops a galloping temperature, has loose bowls, and is extremely weak. Death soon takes over because the heart and brain cannot fight the bacteria.
From experience we know that in cases where no expert is involved and no proper precautions are taken while capturing young fawns, the mortality rate is almost cent per cent. This happens because the trappers are usually villagers are neither trained nor experienced. All they aim to do is capture the fawn by hook or by crook. They travel by jeeps at night and blind the herd with powerful beams. They then either shoot the adult gazelles dead or knock them down by over running them. As the herd runs helter skelter, the fawns stumble and fall. Some are later carried away, while most come under the wheels of the vehicles in the chaos. To obtain these sixteen fawns, these inexperienced trappers must have killed as many as forty-eight gazelles in this heart wrenching operation, which was the first phase.
After the fawns are captured, the poachers keep them in their huts and inform the buyers who come and take them away. Many more during this phase die from fright, hunger and weakness. This is the second phase. Most of these animals lose their lives while in transit, whereas some are maimed. The death toll in such an operation is very high and portrays cruelty of the worst kind. Gazelles are already on the verge of extinction due to hunting in Pakistan.
Even in zoological gardens and nurseries where orphan babies of different animals are kept the death toll is high. The security that the mother provides cannot be compared to that of a nursery. The mother grunts, touches, nourishes and teaches her young ones the secrets of living, apart from nursing them with her milk which is full of nutrients and is good for that particular specie. The nutrients in the milk of various species differ in fat content, proteins, sugar, salt and water. Only the milk that is similar to that of the mother’s will be digested easily. For example, the fat content of seal’s milk is fifty per cent of the total body fat of the animal; a tiger cub would die if fed on it. For our young readers an example of the fat content present in the milk of different species is as follows:
Mare: 1.2%, cow 3.8%, goat: 6.0%, ewe: 6.5%, buffalo: 5-6%, human: 3.6%
Other components in the milk of different species vary significantly. Nature cannot be played around with, as in doing so we would just destroy the best of what it has to offer.
The vet under no stretch of imagination can help make cow’s milk suitable for a fawn. Even the people at Karachi zoo, despite their life long expertise wouldn’t try something like that. It simply does not work. In modern nurseries the milk formulas of various wild animals have been researched and known. But unfortunately this technique has not been developed in Pakistan; hence it cannot be practised effectively here.
You may have noted that every carton of milk that you buy from the market certifies that it is reconstituted, which means its nutrients have been toned down or upgraded for human consumption. This is just the case for any other kind of milk.
The incident at Mithi is just one event that has come to our notice. There may be several other occurrences of this sort that have gone unreported. These incidents pose a grave threat to our wild life, as they already happen to be on the verge of extinction. These animals must be saved for our good and the country’s prosperity.
Rare species such as the meat-eating leopards, snow leopard, black and brown bears, the blind dolphins of the Indus, the pandas and the cheeru (their fur is known to make Shahtoos — one of the costliest shawls of the world) are on the verge of extinction. We must try our best to preserve our wild heritage as we are blessed with species that are unique to this place. It is high time that we took appropriate measures to do so.
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