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Exotics Day
20.04.08
Due to a family emergency, I was not able to run the Woodside Spring Clean in March so the Exotics afternoon was the first meeting this year of Leicestershire’s Junior Membership.
It was a busy session and we had 3 resident experts to help us. There was Beth with her tortoises, Mike with his bearded dragon and Sue with her cornsnake Eddie. The juniors were split into groups and visited each expert in turn to find out as much as possible about the needs of each pet. They had to find out details of how these exotic pets are kept and the level of commitment and the considerable responsibilities their owners have taken on.
The RSPCA does not believe that exotic pets make good pets and it is easy to see why animal centres and local rescue centres are inundated with a wide variety of unwanted specialist animals. They do take a lot of looking after and, kept in the best possible conditions, can live a long time. This gives the owner an extra responsibility to ensure that there is someone who will take on their pet when they are no longer able to care for them. The equipment required is also expensive with heating and lighting needing to be constantly monitored. Vet bills can be very expensive too particularly if the owner has to find an exotics specialist.
Our juniors seemed to take all of these issues on board and produced some excellent advice sheets, posters and fact files. At the end of the afternoon there was competition time with the youngsters choosing to write a poem, draw a detailed portrait of our visiting pets or designing an exotics pet care sheet which included the RSPCA Five Freedoms. We had some fabulous responses and some of the entries have been sent to the RSPCA’s Animal Action Magazine. Let’s hope that they are featured in future publications.
Enjoy!
During the afternoon, fun was had by all and competitions were held and I have posted the winning entries onto our website.
Please click on the competition winner whose work you would like to view
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