Diets
August 1, 2009 at 1:02 am 1 comment
Hi, my name is Cam and I have had the privilege for the last two years, of volunteering at Capron Park Zoo, as a zoo camp assistant over the summer. One of the hands-on activities that campers work on is diet preparation. Diet preparation is an important part of caring for our exotic animals because they provide the daily nutrients and minerals necessary for health maintenance.
We are very busy during diets; working together to make sure that the diets are done to the highest standard. We help to ensure that the diets are prepared exactly as the recipe requires. We assist in weighting meats, counting grains, soaking biscuits, and adding the vitamin sprinkle. We help the campers to cut the fruits and vegetables into perfectly sized pieces for each specific species. By helping with the diets, we are able to ensure that each animal receives its daily nutrients that is needed to stay healthy. Preparing the diets not only gives the campers a taste of zoo keeping, but also allows keepers to spend more time with the animals, time that would have been spent in the commissary/kitchen doing the diets.
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Kyle | August 10, 2009 at 2:50 am
Hello. I’m Kyle, one of the On-site Naturalists.
Another great thing that a certain camp does (Junior Caretakers) is what we call Crew Shadow. During Crew Shadow, Junior Caretakers come around with either On-site Naturalists, Visitor Service Specialists, or Zoo Camp Assistants. While with one of these tracks, they get to first watch us Zoo Crew members doing our job. Then, we guide them as they interact with zoo guests, and then finally, we watch the Junior Caretakers as they interact with the guests with our supervision, but not our knowledge. This gets them ready for what they would do if they were in Zoo Crew.