The project

Happy
Tusks.

Nathakorn Pongsak founded Happy Tusks to develop affordable elephant supplements that mahout families can prepare themselves. Our latest powdered formula makes storage, transport, and daily preparation easier.

Explore the project

The project founder with an elephant in the water

The context

Why minerals matter

An adult Asian elephant can eat around 150 kilograms of food a day. Alongside its plant-based diet, it needs essential minerals, including sodium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus.

Why elephants eat soil

Elephants naturally obtain minerals by eating soil at salt licks. This behaviour is called geophagy. Reports of unusually heavy soil consumption and digestive problems in Surin led me to investigate possible mineral shortages.

Locally made

Developing a locally made supplement

Working with Surin Ban Ta-Klang Elephant Village, Elephant Kingdom Surin by ZPOT, the AKAYA Polyclinic Thai Traditional Medical Council, and local elephant doctors at Zoological Park Organization of Thailand, I developed a herbal supplement using locally sourced ingredients. The recipe had to provide nutritional support while remaining affordable and practical for mahout families.

Dry ingredients arranged separately in a mixing bowl

Prepared ingredients with banana in a mixing bowl

What goes into the recipe

The formula combines tamarind, rice bran, sea salt, moringa, black sesame, nut grass, boraphet, and turmeric, with banana and honey to bind the mixture and make it more appealing to elephants.

From ingredients to supplement balls

Each batch is mixed, shaped into balls, and dried at 50–60°C to reduce moisture for storage. Banana and honey help hold the ingredients together.

Mixing and shaping the supplement mixture by hand

Prepared supplement balls placed on a tray

Baan Ta Klang · Surin

We teach mahouts throughout Thailand, starting with Baan Ta Klang, Surin, Thailand.

Feeding an elephant during the field activity

Explaining the ingredients to people gathered around a table

Participants together during the field activity

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Participants gathered around a table during the preparation activity

A participant holding a prepared supplement ball

Participants together outdoors during the activity

Activity participants standing together with elephants in the background

The next development

Fresh ingredients created another problem

Collecting and preparing fresh ingredients took time, and unused supplies could spoil. A recipe that worked during testing also needed to fit the daily workload of mahout families.

Prepared supplement pouches arranged in rows

The improvement: a powdered formula

In collaboration with Chandrakasem Food Processing Plant at Chandrakasem Rajabhat University, we developed a shelf-stable powdered mix that is easier to store and transport. Mahouts add banana and honey to form supplement balls, preparing what they need without gathering every ingredient from scratch.

The project team beside a mixing machine at the processing facility

Mixing ingredients in the processing facility

Weighing ingredients at the laboratory workbench

Sieving the powdered mixture during preparation

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In everyday care

Made for everyday care

My goal is to make nutritional support something mahouts can afford, prepare, and keep using as part of their elephants’ daily care.

At Somboon Legacy Foundation, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

The project team holding supplement pouches at Somboon Legacy Foundation

Holding a prepared supplement ball above the mixing bowl at Somboon

Three prepared supplement balls held above a bowl at Somboon

At Elephants World, Kanchanaburi

Delivering prepared supplements at Elephants World

Preparing supplements together at Elephants World

Elephants World · Preparation activity

The Results

As the process of preparing the vitamin is not complicated, mahouts can easily prepare it by themselves. They reported elephants given Happy Tusks supplements experienced fewer instances of bloating and diarrhea.

Elephant droppings

Awards

International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada, organised by TISIAS.

Special recognition associated with iCAN from the Inventors Circle / Innovation Initiative Co-operative.

Certificate of Award — Silver Medal — Silver Medal

Canadian Special Award of Excellence certificate — Canadian Special Award of Excellence

iCAN 2026 medal with a red maple-leaf ribbon — iCAN 2026 medal

Award of Excellence medal with a purple ribbon — Award of Excellence medal

Featured in The Nation

Class of Future

27 July 2026

Saving Surin’s Elephants,
One Herbal Block at a Time

By Nathakorn Pongsak (Papang)

Nathakorn shares the story behind Happy Tusks, from the questions that inspired the project to developing a locally made supplement with mahout communities.

Read the article

HappyTusks.