Joe Exotic and crew poked, prodded, used fire extinguishers to get tiger moms away so they could take babies: Former employee

A woman who worked for Joe Exotic says he abused tiger mothers to get their cubs away from them, sometimes before they were able to survive on their own.

Gaylynn Eastwood told CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace, in her new Fox Nation show “A Tiger King Investigation” the cubs’ usefulness to Exotic’s Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park ended at about four months old, when they were too old to be displayed for “cub petting.”

“They’re, you know, they’re not making money anymore,” Eastwood said. “So they’re shoved up into cages.”

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Getting the cubs away from the mother tigers involved separated the mother into a “lockdown pen.”

“In some instances, they would have to poke and prod,” she said. “I did witness them use fire extinguishers one time to … basically smoke the mom out of the house, away from the baby, you know, because it’s a mom’s instinct to stay with her young when they’re first born.”

“So, you know, you got sticks, you got him firing guns up in the air for the noise,” she said.

If none of those tricks worked, the staff would have to “dart her” — shoot the mother with a sedative to knock her out so they could go into the cages. “And it wasn’t just Joe,” Eastwood added. “Like he would have the whole crew down there participating in this.”

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is serving a 22 year prison sentence for trying to set up the murder of his rival Carole Baskin and for several federal wildlife law violations.

Watch the whole episode and the weeklong “A Tiger King Investigation” series on Fox Nation.