trip to the taximermist

The whole experience of the visiting the taxidermy
   It was decided that all the conservation students where to go and visit the taxidermy. For most of us it was the first time going to the taxidermy and for all of us was the first time we got to see how it works and the whole process they go through to stuff the animals and make them look as good as they supposed to look. As we arrived we saw all the different sections of the taxidermy which was the butchery and the main office and the work shop. For five minutes we got to look around at the different animals and tried to guess the different animals which some had never seen before. Then when the lady was finished finalizing last minute occurrences she took us on the tour of the whole place. We started at the back of the taxidermy where all the skinning takes place. What they did in this section was first they got the skin off the animal and then covered the skin in salt to preserve the skin from going mouldy. With the skeletons the cut out the eyes of the animals and cut off as much meat as possible from the bones so the meat doesn’t get old. Then with the skeleton they send it to a different part of the farm to do and put it in boiling water to dissolve the meat off the bones and then bleach the bones to make it look whiter which makes it more appealing. Then when the skins are dry what happens is the ladies start stitching the skin. Parts which look bad or cut open the sow back together making it look more professional. When the skin is done they send it to a different section.




  After this section we were shown the next section which is where they keep all the horns and skulls of the animals. How this section works is that every skeleton which comes in gets a manufacture number which means that if it gets a number then it means that the animal is for local customers and if it is a number with a DIP in front then it’s for international guests. So the skulls and horns are separated here into those two categories.





The next section is where they do the skeleton mounts. This is when they take the skeletons from the previous section and put them together and place them on to a mount. There are lots of different mounts, for example for a big antelope you would use the circle mount and a small duiker or something you should use a smaller square mount for example. These are usually just the skulls and horns not the shoulders or any bones like that. Here the lady explained how they work if they get a rhino horn and what the procedures are if they get rhino horns in then they have to make a mould of the horn out of carbon fibre and keep it for records and they need to make sure of the permits and legal requirements. The previous mount they did they cut the horns of the rhino off and mounted both onto the square mount.
 
 In the next section is where they make the moulds of the animal and then fit the horns on and pull the skin over the moulds and sowed back together and moulded carefully to make the animal look even more real. How they do this is they build the mould of the animal, for example an eland. Then when they have the mould of the eland they fill the insides with special foam so that it doesn’t start collapsing after age or break easily. Then on the outside the carbon fibre they put the glue on and then start putting the skin over. They work the skin over the carbon fibre in till it looks perfect again. If the skin doesn’t look right then they work the skin again, the glue allows them to do so because the glue dries very slowly so that they can still fix it if they make a mistake. Then in the mould they make an indent for where the horns are placed which just slide in and then are fixed to make sure that they don’t fall off. After everything is in place on the animal then they need to make sure that all the skin is placed in the right place. The sow the skin back together very finely so that people cannot see it. Stitch up the animal and then wait for the glue to finish.
After this when the animal is dried out then it goes to the lady which paint over the coat which preserves the skin for a long period of time and she also paints the skin to make it look much better, she used normal paint from a hardware store to paint the coats.
The butchery. This is where all the meat goes after the animal has been butchered. All the carcass’s come in and then are cut up and put in to different sections. When the meat is cut up it is put into bags and boxes and then put into the freezer to keep it fresh and then sold to the public or back to the hunter.
 
And then the final product looks like this-