A day in the life of a zookeeper

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filing the toenails of an elephant isn't glamorous work and neither is cleaning up her messes but this is all part of what zookeepers do to care for the animals no big deal the more we spend time with them the more comfortable that they are and that prepares us for whenever we might need to do something you know potentially more evasive if there's if there's any issues one thing that I work with her is trying to pouch check she obviously wouldn't be pregnant at that point but she's only pregnant for a month so we don't there's no pregnancy tests or anything like that caring for the animals comes with challenges too at the Columbus Zoo and aquariums new heart of Africa exhibit the giraffes sometimes want to stay back with the herd come on boys eventually come out here they like they love being out here they just like to take their time feeding the animals is a major part of the job too and everyone has his own diet we have 10,000 mouths a fee from the smallest crickets to the elephants preparing the produce portion of their diet and we have the grain room in the back that provides the commercial components the nutritional staff weighs out every portion for the meals one more head I think and then we'll be done with the in dive the keepers then take on the rest of the food preparation and make sure everyone is fed touch it there you go all the food that we feed out here is restaurant quality so the same shrimp the same scallops squid everything that you would get at a seafood restaurant is the same grade that we feed out to the the animals here while many of the menus very day to day romaine lettuce is the standard meal for manatees we do throw in quite a bit of endive but I would say the bulk is the romaine it's amazing these guys can grow as much as they do on that not all of the work is above ground but keepers dive into the water areas for feedings and cleaning the tank try to be like moon men in here we put a lot of extra weight on we weight ourselves heavy put ankle weights on so we can more like hop along the bottom rather than have to swim through the tank at the end of the day many keepers find the work very rewarding this whole program stands for everything I stand for and we do use these guys as ambassadors to their cousins in the wild Florida pretty much survives on the tourist trade and if we're down there being tourists it's our responsibility to watch out for these guys my favorite part about working here is just the interaction and the relationships that I build with these animals you work with them every single day and they get to know you and you get to know them and learning their different personalities and seeing them recognize you even when you come here on Lake your days off that's really cool
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Channel: TheColumbusDispatch
Views: 56,552
Rating: 4.9466667 out of 5
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Id: lBLIGwJMyTk
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Length: 2min 56sec (176 seconds)
Published: Thu Jan 22 2015
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