After 16 months of an agonising wait we can finally break the good news: Four pups were born at the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre beginning of May 2014!
Over the past 2 weeks it had already been apparent that Fang and Luna, our alpha pair, were successful in their mating back in February: Luna was definitely pregnant.
When she finally disappeared on May 1st, only to reappear dirty and thin 4 days later to feed, we knew that we had a litter of wolf puppies somewhere in our 15 acre enclosure.
We wanted to give the wolf pups a few days but finally entered the enclosure to look for the litter, expecting a long search. First we needed to deal with Fang, the proud father and fully socialised alpha wolf. In the past we only had to deal with an unsocialised pack, which disappeared in fear as soon as we entered their realm. But Fang is different: We did not know how he would respond to us handling the pups and we certainly were not willing to take any chances. But it turned out he was very cooperative and got easily distracted with a meal of deer parts.
After that, it hardly took 10 minutes of a concentrated search when we suddenly found ourselves on top of a fresh mound of dirt, of which emanated this subtle yet clearly audible “whine” of contentment, which almost sounded like a snore.
We got our flashlights ready and laid out our jackets. Phil, the longest and most nimble crawled in and one by one handed the four pups to Elke for a quick check over and sexing: three males and one female, two black and two brown, all apparently very healthy and comparatively larger than pups in previous seasons.
If I had my choice, the distribution in colours and sexes of these pups could not have been more perfect for our pack. Thanks Luna and Fang for a job well done !
Peter Schleifenbaum
PS: Today we briefly held a cell phone into the den and recorded the sounds. Click here to listen to the wolf pups !