Meerkat Blog

Wait … what … you’re telling me that’s not a tennis ball! She’s going to have babies! Oh my! <Emotional moment> 

With this exciting news the team at Auchingarrich set about some enclosure renovations

The first job was to dig out the drain. It had become so blocked that it no longer drained water but instead formed a huge puddle. Meerkats are native to South Africa and so the Scottish weather really isn’t to their liking at the best of times.

I was a little concerned that the disruption would be stressful especially to mama meerkat but I couldn’t have been more wrong. They loved all the attention and excitement. Safely penned at one end of the enclosure they watched on with delight.

Once the drain was cleared we added a special drainage fabric and began to cover it with sand. Our friends at Aggregates Direct kindly supplied 4 bulk bags of super soft playpit grade sand for us to top up the enclosure but not before we installed the burrow.

MAKING BURROWS

Meerkats love to burrow and create a series of chambers to sleep and rear their young. The burrows have to have several entrances and exits so they can make a quick escape from predators … not that we have any predators in Auchingarrich Wildlife Park but try as we may, we could not convince the meerkats of this fact!

It transpires that sand burrows are unstable and prone to collapse so we had to be more creative.

Luckily - we knew a man who specialised in making ‘burrows’ underground - albeit of the drainage type.

Andrew Tainsh helped us put together a selection of pipes and drainage inspection chambers to create a ‘fake’ burrow. We had to make sure the pipes all pointed down so as not to catch rain. As a precaution, we placed bricks in the bottom so the base is raised off the ground and then packed it with straw.Meetkats can have between 1-15 pups and have a gestation period of 70 days so we needed to work super fast.

With the nest in place, we buried it under the sand and weighted it down with a tree trunk. Our concern was that the meerkats would just dig up the burrow.

So far so good but please help us by keeping a watchful eye out and if you see any signs of naughty burrowing, please do come and tell one of the animal keepers. We can be easily identified in our green Auchingarrich uniform.

Next week, the finishing touches to our new meerkat enclosure will arrive.

We are so excited and think you will love the mini makeover although if mama does give birth to 15 meerkats we will need a complete new enclosure.

Fund raising begins today!