The herd health program has been planned as follows
- The elephant camp management survey will collect the information related to health, such as working hours per day, food, water, number of tourists per elephant, housing, breeding, birth records etc. Then this information will be analyzed to find the factors that are related to health issues.
- Annual health check such as blood profiles, parasitology, foot problems, body condition score, deworming program etc. will be performed and recorded regularly.
- Pregnancy test and reproductive performance will be analyzed.
- Risk analysis of the health issues in each elephant camp will be performed by final year veterinary students during the clinical rotation class. We have set up the real problem-based learning scheme for each group of students to interview, discover from the mahout, staff and elephant. The students are assigned to analyze the factors that are related to health and reproductive problems under supervision of the veterinarians and instructors.
- Welfare assessment is performed to evaluate the health, behaviors and management which improves the elephant’s quality of life in those facilities.
- Elephant training course is a part of herd health program, called “preventive medicine”, in order to let the staff and mahout of each camp understand the basic biology, behavior, and health care. First aid is also taught to the mahouts and staff of the camps giving them the knowledge and confidence to perform initial treatment.
