2013 HippoPUBamus update!

Happy new year everyone! We know the HippoPUBamus was back in October, but we wanted to give you a short update on the two hippos we sponsor at the Turgwe Hippo Trust in Zimbabwe.

The hippos we adopt are Dizzy, who is almost seven years old now, and her older brother Kuchek who is on the cusp of becoming a teenager. He will turn 13 years old this March.

This year the HippoPUBamus raised nearly $400, all of which we donated to the Turgwe Hippo Trust to sponsor both Dizzy and Kucheck again as well as help with repairs and other costs the Turgwe Hippo Trust currently has, including transporting hay for the hippos and repairing vehicles for the Trust.

Karen Paolillo, the founder of the Turgwe Hippo Trust, sends us biannual updates on Dizzy and Kuchek, and we have shared Dizzy's most recent update below, including a stunning nighttime photo of the siblings spending quality family time together.

Kuchek in foreground and Dizzy behind him taking a rest at the hay

Dizzy, alongside all of Robin’s family, is now regularly being fed at one of the two feeding stations next to our home Hippo Haven.  For the first time in 21 years I have had to feed the hippos again. The drought is not as bad as in 1992 but even so I will be feeding for five months.

Dizzy was one of the first hippos, alongside her brother Kuchek and Cheeky, to feed.  Cheeky fed back in 92, so obviously remembered that sometimes humans can be useful and knew what to do, taking to the food within a couple of days.

Dizzy was the second hippo to take advantage of this artificial feeding and now spends every night with the rest of Robin’s family happily munching away.

I feed Rhodes grass hay as the main bulk to fill their huge tummies, as well as survival ration and horse cubes as the added protein which holds all the goodness they need to maintain a healthy condition.  Dizzy is actually very funny as she was the first of the hippos to lie down next to the hay while feeding. The photo above shows her and her brother Kuchek taking a rest from eating to lie on the hay. Hippos normally feed at night and rest wherever they are grazing, so this is very normal. I have seen through the trail camera that I leave next to their food, that they arrive at the hay about ten minutes after we have left, which is at dark and at about six thirty pm and then they stay the entire night at the two feeding stations. They take time off to have a nap and then feed again. At around five a.m. they go back to the river into their pool.  Here they then spend the entire morning digesting and sleeping, which at this moment is usually on land, lying in the sun on the sandy banks of the river. This allows me to check their condition and see their overall appearance.  I have noticed that they are slowly beginning to gain a bit of weight, which is fantastic.

I have slowly increased the amount of hay and other goodies and at this moment the family of 11 hippos is consuming 14 bales of hay, 50kg of Survival ration and 10 kg of horse cubes each night.  This will probably increase as it gets hotter and dryer and we move into the extreme heat of October and November.

Dizzy is still the most curious of people amongst all the Turgwe Hippos and she loves to be photographed. When I take the volunteers or visitors down to the pool in the river to meet the hippos it is always Dizzy who comes the closest to us all.  Her family members have always been gentle hippos and even her brother Kuchek, who is a young bull, is a quiet and gentle male and has a lovely character.  Dizzy could get pregnant this year as she is at the age where many of the Turgwe Hippos have had their first calf. I believe that her best friend Kiboko is pregnant as she is beginning to show signs that she could be, but we will only know for sure around the last month of pregnancy as hippos hardly ever show that they are having a calf until the last moment.

Dizzy still spends a lot of time next to her brother on land and in the water, and they seem to have a very close bond. Their mother Mystery is still living 14 km away with her new son Monty, and Chubby the young male.  She visited here once this year but seems to prefer being with Chubby, which is I am sure due to the fact that her calf is a male.  Dizzy thankfully has decided to remain living here with Kuchek and not join her mother further away. 

She thanks you as her foster parent for caring about her life and supporting her.

The Turgwe Hippo Trust was started in the early 1990s when the hippos' lives were in danger due to a devastating drought in the southeast Lowveld area of Zimbabwe. Karen and her husband set up a water supply and feeding program to help save the hippos at that time and have continued to protect the hippos during times of drought and from the threat of poachers.

Denver's Own HippoPUBamus is an annual pub crawl that began in 2005 as the brain child of a small group of friends who, after hiking Bierstadt 14er, decided we needed to offset all that exercise and start a pub crawl. Combining a love of hippos with a catchy name, the HippoPUBamus was born! We collect donations from friends and from t-shirt sales to sponsor Dizzy and Kuchek. We hope you can join us in Fall 2014 for our 10th anniversary!