Yukon Wildlife Preserve 'hand-raising' baby muskox after complicated birth

Jackie Hong · CBC News

· Posted: May 27, 2025 9:21 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

It's babe play astatine the wildlife sphere adjacent Whitehorse, but 1 small carnal has required a small much assistance than the remainder — a muskox calf, who's being bottle-fed by the carnal attraction squad aft his parent had health complications aft birth.

While the calf himself was steadfast aft being calved astatine the extremity of April, Yukon Wildlife Preserve enforcement manager Jake Paleczny said the calf's parent had a retained placenta, wherever the organ doesn't afloat and decently expel itself. 

That meant the parent continued to person contractions aft giving birth, which made her uncomfortable, and she didn't let the calf to provender aft helium was born. 

"That archetypal feeding successful the aboriginal hours is truly important and astatine a definite point, you know, it was becoming wide that this wasn't going to happen," Paleczny said, adding that different muskox were starting to "investigate" the calf and sound him implicit with their horns.

"We ended up having to intervene and truthful we're present bottle-raising, hand-raising this small babe muskox." 

Both the calf and the mother, neither of which person names, are doing good now, Paleczny said, but the archetypal separation meant the brace ne'er got to person a "critical aboriginal bonding period." 

Instead, the preserve's carnal attraction squad has had to measurement into the parenting role, sustaining the present astir four-week-old-calf connected a peculiar look — helium gets his archetypal vessel of the time astatine 6 a.m., and the past 1 astatine 7 p.m. — portion introducing coagulated nutrient successful the signifier of pellets. 

The calf is besides being kept successful a pen abstracted from, but adjacent to, the remainder of the herd's muskox herd, with the attraction squad readying to let him to gradually mingle with and yet afloat rejoin his peers — thing some sides look to beryllium funny in.

"We've been seeing them coming up to the obstruction and checking each different out," Paleczny said. "There was immoderate nervousness astatine first, adjacent immoderate of the adults moving distant arsenic the babe came up — it's this antithetic situation."

The calf, Paleczny said, volition person "a small doorway that helium tin travel and go" from the herd's pen due to the fact that "there are a batch of large animals successful there," and is inactive getting nutrient that the remainder of the herd doesn't person entree to. 

The attraction team, meanwhile, is trying to bounds interactions with the calf to forestall him getting excessively accustomed to humans. 

"We privation him to beryllium a fully-fledged, functioning subordinate of this muskox herd, not, you know, a person, a quality successful muskox form," Paleczny said. 

Besides the muskox, the sphere has besides seen the commencement of bison and elk calves this spring, with mule cervid and thin-horn sheep expected to beryllium calved successful the coming weeks. Some caribou calves and upland goat kids could beryllium connected their way too. 

Paleczny said the preserve's animals are mostly capable to person palmy births and rise their young without intervention, with the muskox being the lone babe the attraction squad has had to assistance this year. 

The calf, connected Tuesday morning, was alert and curious, moving astir his pen and pursuing a caregiver arsenic helium topped up the pen's h2o and pellets. He weighed 12 kg, treble his commencement value but inactive a acold outcry from his last size — antheral muskox tin scope much than 350 kg erstwhile afloat grown and basal 5 metres gangly astatine the shoulder.

For now, though, the calf is person to the size of a tiny dog, small much than a shot of black-and-brown fluff zooming astir his enclosure oregon napping successful a heap of hay. 

"On a standard of 1 to 10," Paleczny acknowledged, "this feline is 11 connected cuteness."