Retired elephants live in this nursing home in Myanmar: photos

In Myanmar, elephants have worked in the timber-logging industry since the 1800s, but thousands are retiring. Government elephant camps around the country are now working to figure out what to do with the aging animals, since releasing them into the wild comes with many challenges.I recently visited one of the country's private elephant nursing homes, and was amazed at what goes into the creatures' daily care.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.In Myanmar, elephants are hardworking lumberjacks.Burmese Asian elephants have been timber loggers in the country for hundreds of years. They help lug teak wood out of the dense forests that cloak roughly half of Myanmar in verdant canopies.It's been an important job, since Myanmar is home to the world's largest natural teak forests, and was recently considered the number one teak producer in the world by the United Nations. But that's changing: Wrestling with one of the worst deforestation rates in the world, Myanmar banned all raw timber exports in 2014. Domestic logging was drastically reduced. Then in 2016, the government put a one-year ban on logging altogether, though that restriction has been eased in some parts the country.Still, Myanmar's once ubiquitous logging elephants are largely off the job now, and the transition hasn't been easy. Government camps are struggling to find new things for the captive elephants to do, and many of the animals are putting on extra weight in retirement and desperate for sex, as The New York Times reported in 2016.I recently visited one of Myanmar's only private elephant nursing homes, called Green Hill Valley. The elephant camp, which opened in 2011, is located in the hills of south-central Myanmar, just over 100 miles from the Thai border. It's home to eight elephants and their caregivers, and funded by visits from tourists.The elephants that call the camp home range in age from 11 to 69. Some are there because they're orphans, others have injuries that make it difficult for them to do labor, and the eldest are retirees who've aged out of logging work.Here's what it was like to spend a day up close and personal with the pachyderms.