On Friday, Keeper Marilyn and I were getting enrichment ready for Max, the steer in our Farmyard. Sometimes the enrichment is some kind of scent or flavor sprayed or spread on some of the toys that we vary in the yard. This time, we thought it might be fun to try molasses and see if Max might like it. As soon as he was let out of his stall, he ran down to the pole where we had hung hisRead more
Posts filed in: Farmyard
Bathing a small car…
Yes, that’s right… I said bathing a small car. That’s because our 1,400 pound steer, Max, is almost big enough to be a small car (or at least it seems that way when you have 4 or 5 people scrubbing him down). We give Max pretty regular baths during the warmer months of the year. He really seems to enjoy being bathed and pampered and it also serves as a fun thing for our volunteers to participate in, along withRead more
QuikPost: Fun with enrichment
As I stated in another post, sometimes animal enrichment also serves as keeper enrichment. Last summer, the exhibits department donated the large stuffed horse from Play To Learn to the Animal Department when it was time to buy a new one. The horse sat on our support hall for a very long time, but finally one of the keepers decided to use it as enrichment for some of the farmyard animals. Obviously, this is an item that needed to haveRead more
A pleasant morning walk
A few days ago, I set off from the building around 9:00 am to go train the red ruffed lemurs in Explore The Wild (ETW). I decided to take a camera so that I could take pictures of some of our animals along the way. I first stopped off in the farmyard and was greeted by the two nigerian dwarf goats, Patches and Rocky. They are brothers and both like a good head and neck scratch from keepers and visitors alike, but thisRead more
QuikPost: Max and his stump
Kimberly shared the stump story, along with photos of the bears and the stumps. Jim, our landscape environments director and deliverer of the stumps to the yards, caught this video of the end of Max’s initial meeting with his stump. Enjoy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nv5nhNrH8[/youtube]Read more
Christmas 2010
It’s around 11:00 and Christmas 2010 is very uneventful- nothing to laugh or cry about yet. (Click here to read about past Christmas’ which were much more interesting!) I arrived around 5:30 this morning. There was no rain, no flat tires, no really sick animals, nothing. I checked in with the security guard and then began my day. I let Ladybelle ferret wander around. It did take 10 photos to get this non-blurry photo of her. I worked through feeding,Read more