Dasara Elephants - Royal Feast

Royal Feast

While in their respective camps the elephants are served 'Ragi mudde', a mixture of ragi and horse gram and fodder branches. But when they are royal guests in the royal city of Mysore preparing for Dasara, they are served with ‘royal’ food till the grand Dasara finale - Jamboo Savari. The elephants get to eat urud dal, green gram, wheat, boiled rice, onion and vegetables in the mornings and evenings. They get rice, groundnut, coconut, jaggery and sugarcane with some salt to add taste to the diet after they return from their regular rehearsals. This food is served twice a day. They also get branch fodder like banyan leaves. Extra care is taken while serving food to the jumbos. High-calorie and protein-rich food is served to the elephants to improve their physical fitness. They carry a lot of weight at the procession and for that, they need strength. Hence they are fed with rich food. The food served in the morning is laced with pure butter for flavour. Besides nutritious food, vitamin doses are also injected so as to balance the diet. An elephant eats 400 kilograms of fodder in a day in the forests. The food served to them in Mysore contains high calories and is more than what they eat in the jungles.