Wolves
This is Nimkee ("Thunder" in Ojibwa or Chippewa ). He is an Arctic Wolf cross and about 7 year old in this picture. GarLyn Zoological Park has 3 wolf/wolf dog animals housed in a large natural enclosure. We raised our first wolves in a kennel off the side of our house for their first year, to make them less shy of people. Within the first couple of weeks of being placed in the large enclosure they started digging a den and in the sand we have here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula it wasn't long before they had a den 15 to 20 feet deep and about 2 feet in diameter. Luckily they dug inward instead of toward the outside. They seem to be content with it now at about 20 to 25 feet deep. In 1998 we rescued 2 pups and kept them at the house for about 6 weeks. You can see the difference in the how shy they are as compared to our 1st ones raised. This is possibly due to the shorter stay at the house or possibly from changing owners at an older age. They were about 6 to 8 weeks old when we got them, compared to 3 and 5 weeks old on our 1st two wolves. We try to feed our wolves as much natural meat as possible by getting some road killed whitetail deer and snowshoe hare. We also get meat scraps from the local shops along with high protein, meat based dog food and a freeze dried product made for carnivores.
If you would like to see more photos of wolves at the zoo
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