Lions at Antelope Park in Zimbabwe

Hi all, just to let you know I have arrived safely in Zimbabwe and have met my first few lions!!!

The ones above are the newest arrivals born on January 19th so not yet 2 months old.. have missed the bottle feeding by a couple of weeks :-( but already trained on preparing their 4 meals a day of mince and warm milk.

My typical day involves an alarm at 5.50!! which if you know me well is a BIG challenge!

At 6.15 we are allocated are first walk of the day .. in my first 6 days I have pretty much walked all the cubs who are old enough to walk and done cub sitting with the others.

Its back for breakfast at 8.30 before the longest shift of the day 9.30 to 12.30 .. today was meat prep for the older cubs .. involving parts of a cow (skin, bones and all), enclosure cleaning and then feeding the cubs, and collecting data on their feeding behaviour. I finished early so was at the poolside by 11.45 :-) before heading into lunch

Started early this afternoon too at 2 instead of 2.30 to prep the babies lunch and then feed them.. spent a couple of hours playing with them before heading back for a final walk with the 10 month old cubs (the oldest we currently walk) and then dinner.

Its not all hard work though .. yesterday I had a full day of horse induction which included an afternoon in the park amongst zebra, wilderbeast, giraffe, and impala to mention a few!

Having a great time.

Sarah