Baby elephant tub time

Back Home again

Its great to be back home and having cleaned up and got organized after 3 weeks of being out because of the floods. Today we were able to accommodate all of our elephantstayers with 11 elephants! Thanks to Elephant Encounters, who were able to change their dates and help us celebrate being home and help care for our elephants!

Daily routine

Bathing and cleaning an elephant is one of the highlights of our program.
As you see, it takes more then a few hands to clean our elder elephants.

13th March National Thai Elephant Day

National Elephant Day is all about raising awareness of the endangered Asian Elephant. The elephants and people were blessed and Arjarn Daeng and enjoyed a special feast of treats.

Welcome to our newest volunteer Christine Cox! 

Christine came as a guest last August and loved Elephantstay so much she has come back to volunteer for 3 months. We are very glad to have you on board!

Kame our youngest baby

Late news because of very busy times her......, but Sopah has her baby.

Sopah's baby goes through life now as Kame. Named after Princess Stephanie's daughter Camille, her nick name is Kame. We were very honored with her visit last week, she is such a caring person especially for our elephants.                                          

                                                                                     Kame

Yitor!

Emily Goodwin about Yitor:

Yitor is an amazing ellie!

She is very kind and gentle and she knows what she wants! She is very cute! She loves to eat a lot of food, she loves swimming as well and I loved being in the water with her! 

Scrubbing her was her favorite as she looked sooo happy when I scrubbed the top of her head! Every elephant is intelligent, Yitor seemed especially intelligent! She knew when I felt nervous and knew when I was comfortable riding! Yitor is also very photogenic! 

I loved my experience with her she is an amazing animal!

This week Jintara in the spotlight

Let  me introduce our most recent addition to the Elephantstay herd....Jintara.

Jintara (which means "most beautiful girl") is the newest addition to elephantstay, she has been in our program for some 6 months now and is settling in well. 

One of her most defining features is her beautiful big grey-blue eyes that she flashes at our guests to try and encourage some extra treats (which usually works). 

She is also the youngest member of our group of elephants and one of the smallest elephants in our program, being dwarfed by Rosukon when she stands beside her. This however doesn't stop her from making a big presence and she has a lot of personality, love and affection that she shares with our guests every day. 

Be sure to follow more on Jintara this week!

Important news for our Blog Followers!

Starting the week of January 11, Blogger will remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other Open Id providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, Blogger will remove non-Google Account profiles so you will no longer be able to see the latest posts and all activity on our Blog.

If you are using a non-Google Account to follow our blog, please sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow our blog. With a Google Account, you will get blogs added to your Reading List, making it easier to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs you follow.

We hope this change will improve the experience for you all.

Elephantstay honored with legacy!

Elephantstay and the Phra Kochabaan Foundation would like to thank Paul Anthony Gatien for leaving us part of his estate to continue our work and care of our elephants. Because of his generosity we are able to proceed with projects that will enhance and improve the lives of our elephants.
As many of you know we have been devastated by floods during the rainy seasons over the years. This in turn has caused many problems for the elephant's sleeping areas. Every time we get rain the night areas become boggy and too wet for the elephants to sleep. So we must move them outside to sleep elsewhere.
We have started to bring in soil to raise the land higher and heavy machinery has been forming the land to create raised sleeping areas so when it rains the water will run off and not sit where the elephants sleep. Each sleeping area will also have a mound of soil to act like a pillow or rest which will help our older elephants get up in the morning. We will use the heavy machines to drive down concrete posts tethering the elephants in a more effective and secure way. We are improving the drainage system so the water drains away and does not sit there making the ground more boggy. 
We are changing our watering system to effectively increase the volume and speed of water. This will bring water more efficiently for drinking and bathing. The three areas that we are targeting is the elephant nursery, the communal shower and the Elephantstay elephants. To do this we have to increase the size of our pipes, faucets, hoses and purchasing a more powerful pump.
Scratchng or rubbing posts is something we have been planning to happen for some time now. Because of the years of flooding we have lost all our large trees which the elephants loved to rub and scratch on, which was good for their skin. We will erect two sets of scratching posts in two locations. Each set will consist of three types of posts protruding from the ground at different angles so the elephants can rub all of their body easily.
One of our bull elephants, Yod Yeam, has a disability. His leg was broken when during the night another bull got his chain and attacked him. Because of this, his leg is stiff and he has trouble walking. We are making him a structure to reside in during the day which has a roof for shade and sand floor. There will also be horizontal supports for him to lean on and alleviate the pressure of his good legs. This structure will make him more comfortable and improve his quality of life.
These projects are very costly and the legacy of 50,000 AUD from Paul Anthony Gatien has meant we can achieve these goals.
We would also like to thank Alex Maroulis, executor and trustee of Paul's estate for ensuring his legacy has been realized. 
Improving the lives of our elephants is an ongoing work in progress and we greatly appreciate the generous contribution Paul has made. 
You may want to consider making a legacy in your will to Elephantstay. We will ensure it makes a considerable difference to our elephants.

Please take a look at our facebook All help Elephantstay help Elephants for more photos.

Happy Loi Krathong

Today Gig was teaching us how to make a Krathong. A good time for the mahouts, our guests and ofcourse the staff. See the results here!

Soi Happy times!

Please check our youtube channel for more Elephantastic videos and we are also on Instagram.
Check it out!

Sopah's baby coming soon now!

Sopah will soon have another baby. Please stay tuned.

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Farewell and good luck Neil and Matt

Neil and Matt wishing you the best holiday and much laughter, love and happiness for your next adventure and the future. Thanks for everything you have done for the Elephants, Elephantstay and us. Thanks for all the great laughs, fun, and support. You will be missed. Lots of love from all us at Elephantstay. xxx

Tripadvisor Hall of Fame

The Elephantstay team is very proud, as this would not be possible without all your help!

THANK YOU ALL for writing the reviews on Elephantstay.

New Elephant IDs

We are very proud to be issued the new national Elephant Identification papers. Due to our founder, Laithongrien (Pi Om) Meepan’s vision and efforts, the government adopted his idea for a centralized system that ensures all legal elephants are issued with these comprehensive ID’s that act as a passport and will be used to monitor ownership, all travel and even bull elephant's ivory! In recognition of Pi Om’s invaluable knowledge and contribution to the new system, the government used the same elephant as we do for the design. The colour pink is the official colour of the King of Thailand. This new computerized centralized system will certainly impact the illegal trade, capture and use of wild elephants and the illegal ivory trade. New born elephants will need to be registered within 30 days of birth which will also help to protect all elephants.

THAI NATIONAL ELEPHANT DAY MARCH 13TH

What a fantastic morning of elephants feasting and blessings. Our Elephantstayers had the privilege

of being part of this special day to honour Thailand's Elephants.

Birth Alert No 62

For the second time Namphueng gave birth very considerately at 8pm. A beautiful baby girl who has been named Gaowgalong. This is Namphueng's fourth baby.

Fundraising money helps Elephants

Ewa and I are back in Thailand from our recent trip to Australia. It was great to catch up with family and friends. While we were in Melbourne Elephant Encounters Jenny Jeanette Dickens and Rob Dickens were kind enough to host a fund raiser for Elephantstay which raised $4,000. Also included in that total are the sales from the book For the love of Elephants and some other donations. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued support and also give you an up date on what we have been doing with the money. Those of you that have been here in the rainy season would know that the paddock where the elephants sleep can get very boggy and end up with a lot deep foot prints from the elephants. So the first thing did was get some machines in there to smooth out the paddock and remove all the waste and water. Then after the paddock had dried out we made new tethering spots for the elephants to sleep this time we concreted them. We have made 10 spots so we can rotate the elephants if some spots are getting boggy. Next we had to replace one of the drinker pots as Yitor in her excitement of bashing her pineapple plant smashed one of them. So while were doing that job we thought it would be a good time to replace the outlet valves in the other pots as all the theads had worn out over the years. We also concreted inside the pots so they would drain easier. Also in this area we have had some problems with drainage since the new road has been built so modifications have been made to improve this and are still not finished. Four new sleeping mounds have been made for our older elephants to help them get up in the mornings. Lastly at this time of the year some of our olders girls can really feel the cold so we have made some blankets to put on them on those cold nights to keep them a bit warmer. We and the Elephants thank you for your support. Michelle Reedy Operations Director Elephantstay