Antelope From the African Swamp

[swamp thang 16]

Just seen the Muntjac picture. Looks a lot like an African Duiker. Muntjacs are supposed to be Asian originally, I read somewhere.

[beast 1,884]

nice pictures swamp thang. beatiful creatures, what other hoofed creatures you got round there?

[D Lloyd 2,790]

stunning :thumbs:

[swamp thang 16]

The bushbuck herd in the pen out back aren't anywhere near tame, so the only way I was able to get this group closeup was to put a trail-camera out when they gather for lunch.

 

Without this addition of pre-soaked beans to supplement their diet of leaves, these animals just waste away and won't breed at all. They also get cattle salt-lick blocks for their minerals.

 

Almost all of these were born in captivity, though I do buy the odd fawn from local hunters who would otherwise feed them to their hunting dogs, and those youngsters get bottle-fed till they can eat greens.

 

 

 

[skycat 6,173]

They really are stunning animals, and look in very good condition as well: you must be doing something right! How did you come up with the pre-soaked beans supplement? Was it trial and error or what?

[Squirrel_Basher 17,100]

Very nice clear pics mate ,cracking stills of what are for us exotics .Thanks for sharing mate .

[swamp thang 16]

They really are stunning animals, and look in very good condition as well: you must be doing something right! How did you come up with the pre-soaked beans supplement? Was it trial and error or what?

 

Hello Skycat,

 

When I first started out trying to raise bushbuck in captivity with a few orphaned fawns some years back, I was fairly confident from my years of hunting them that I knew all the varieties of foliage that they eat, but I found out that the leaves and vines that were being brought in for them were still lacking in some key nutrient that I couldn't put my finger on.

 

Finally a man who kept goats showed up, and noting how skinny the bushbuck in the pen were back then, suggested I try feeding them raw beans like he fed his goats, but only if the beans had been soaked for 3 to 4 hours beforehand, during which time they would swell up, and increase somewhat in volume. The goat farmer cautioned that any shorter of a soak than 3 hours, and the beans would swell up after being eaten by the animals, bloating them to where they could even die from it.

 

Literally within weeks of adding the pre-soaked beans and cattle salt-lick blocks to their diet, the bushbuck filled out, looked way better, and began to breed, which they hadn't done at all before the diet change. That extra protein from the beans made a world of difference, and the animals have thrived ever since.

 

I had to add this last picture. This one seems to have just learnt what my home-made sign in the background is about.

 

[skycat 6,173]

Interesting! I wonder what that extra nutrient is that they get in the wild? I've spoken to people who have reared fox cubs in captivity, and they all say that they need to give them extra Vitamin C for them to survive and thrive as they do in the wild. Animals know so much more than us about what they need to thrive!

[lat 29]

Great pictures,dead interesting. Thanks mate.

[jonah. 775]

this a great thread and pics too, what kind of trail cam are you using ?

do you harvest the bush buck for your personal meat consumption?

what kind of size is the pen that you keep them in? (and how many are in there)

do you have any issues with predators trying to get at your stock?

sorry for all the questions...

ATB

[swamp thang 16]

Hello Jonah, The camera is the Covert Black 60 trailcam, one of the new generation of "black flash" infra-red cameras whose flash is not visible to the human eye. This camera really comes into its own at night, and has the brightest "invisible" flash on the market right now, which really lights up the night better than most other models on the market.

 

The bushbuck are kept in a really small area of maybe an acre at best, surrounded by 8-foot high chain-link fence. I keep them mostly for visitors and schools to look at, but the bucks get terrirotial during their rut, and the dominant one sometimes gores lesser males, which then go in the pot, after the injured area is cut out, since I have no tranquillizer gear to capture them for medical care.

 

The number of bushbuck seems to have stabilized at between 25 and 30, with most of them does and fawns. I also have about 20 smaller duiker antelope, which are light grey in color and stand just a foot tall, but they didn't show up for the group picture when I set the camera up. I'll try and post a shot of one later.

 

There are no predators besides humans here, with most of the remaining wildlife under extreme hunting pressure year round. Visitors who hunt have been the most impressed with this small herd of mine, since they only get to see animals running full throttle during a hunt, and never calmly wandering about like these domesticated ones do here.

Edited January 8, 2013 by swamp thang

[jonah. 775]

Hello Jonah, The camera is the Covert Black 60 trailcam, one of the new generation of "black flash" infra-red cameras whose flash is not visible to the human eye. This camera really comes into its own at night, and has the brightest "invisible" flash on the market right now, which really lights up the night better than most other models on the market.

 

The bushbuck are kept in a really small area of maybe an acre at best, surrounded by 8-foot high chain-link fence. I keep them mostly for visitors and schools to look at, but the bucks get terrirotial during their rut, and the dominant one sometimes gores lesser males, which then go in the pot, after the injured area is cut out, since I have no tranquillizer gear to capture them for medical care.

 

The number of bushbuck seems to have stabilized at between 25 and 30, with most of them does and fawns. I also have about 20 smaller duiker antelope, which are light grey in color and stand just a foot tall, but they didn't show up for the group picture when I set the camera up. I'll try and post a shot of one later.

 

There are no predators besides humans here, with most of the remaining wildlife under extreme hunting pressure year round. Visitors who hunt have been the most impressed with this small herd of mine, since they only get to see animals running full throttle during a hunt, and never calmly wandering about like these domesticated ones do here.

 

thanks for taking the time out to reply.

last question....where are you ?

[swamp thang 16]

I'm in west Africa. The website mods know exactly where of course, but just in case any government officials from this neck of the woods are listening in, I can't be too specific, given the way firearm permits get revoked here from time to time, and hunting weapons "confiscated", as a prelude to, ahem, re-distribution of said weapons to more "deserving" owners.

[sniffer 167]

Very interesting reading swampy the catfish pond on the first thread you said you had dug do you breed them for eating or for sport? do they make any size?

[swamp thang 16]

I sell catfish fingerlings, when they are six weeks old, and about an inch long, Sniffer. My hatchery creates a reproductively sterile but fast growing cross-breed of two African catfish, the Heterobranchus logifilis, which can grow quite big in the wild, and the Clarias "walking" catfish, which reaches a smaller adult size. Those fingerlings are raised by local farmers for 4 to 6 months when they reach a couple of kilos in size, and then sold by weight in markets here. Both parent stock and their fast-growth offspring are air-breathing catfish which are generally sold alive by the fish farmers, which is important in the Third World where there isn't constant electricity much of the time, to power fridges and freezers.

 

One of these days I'd like to see how European Wells catfish fare in the endless summer weather here, where they can feed and grow year round with no hibernation period like there is during those European winters. I think they'd grow very fast, perhaps even faster than the local species here. There's a Wells hatchery in Austria that I hope to buy some fry from one day, after I get the import and export permits sorted.

 

The ponds down by the river are where I keep the parent broodstock catfish, since they don't fare well in concrete tanks, and the camera that caught that deer at dawn was actually set up to photograph a man who had been poaching my broodstock at night for a long time. Got the poacher on film a few times, and then the night guards scared him off recently, so hopefully he will stay away from my prized broodstock now.

Edited January 8, 2013 by swamp thang