It has been about eight months since the calf arrived at Futaba Farm in February 2022, and it has grown rapidly. Its weight, which was 117kg when it arrived, has more than tripled to 393kg (as of September 26th).

The scene when I first arrived at the park (Date of photo: February 18, 2022)	Recent events (Date of photo: October 6, 2022)

The calf was brought Children's Zoo STEP, which focuses on "food education," to provide children with an opportunity to think about the relationship between what they eat and animals.

The children actively participated in a program where they watched a picture story show and then observed animals up close, making various experiences and discoveries. Among them, the calf played its role admirably.


Scenes from the educational program "Let's think about 'Itadakimasu' (a Japanese phrase said before eating)."
(Date of photo: June 17, 2022)
When the calf first arrived at the zoo, it lived in the same enclosure as Llama, Alpaca, and Goat, and was often seen resting close to Llama.

As she grew older, she began sharing the enclosure with Llama, but her imposing presence made her popular with visitors, and many people always came to Futaba Farm.


Together with Llama, Alpaca, and Goat
(Date of photo: February 21, 2022)
The calf has grown quite large and is approaching adulthood, so it will be returning to its birthplace, Snow Brand Children's Country Farm, a little earlier than planned.

The removal process

Generally, cattle are transported in trucks specially designed for livestock. To ensure that calves can easily board the trucks on the day they return to the pasture, they are trained from a young age to walk and follow human instructions.

When they first arrived, they would stop at unfamiliar things and take a long time to pass through gratings (mesh covers for drainage ditches) out of caution, but eventually they were able to move when given the commands "go" and "stop."

On the morning of the day we returned to the farm, it only took us about three minutes to get the cows out of their sleeping quarters and onto the truck bed, which shows that we were able to fully demonstrate the results of our practice.

The calf remained calm throughout the journey, even in the truck, and we arrived safely at Snow Brand Children's Country Farm in about an hour and a half.

Scenes from when we left Futaba Ranch (Date of photo: October 12, 2022)	We arrived safely at Snow Brand Children's Country Farm. (Date of photo: October 12, 2022)

While we feel a little sad because she had such a significant presence at Futaba Farm, everyone in charge hopes that she will go on to have a successful career as a dairy cow.

The cows at Futaba Farm will be absent for a while, but we will continue our efforts in "food education" in cooperation with Snow Brand Children's Country Farm.

[Ueno Zoo Children's Zoo Staff]

(October 13, 2022)