Day in the life of a ZooKeeper at ZooMontana

[Music] all right hi guys my name is keeper allison i've been at zoo montana for about three years i've been zookeeping for about six years so still a rookie but i do have a little bit of experience under my belt but i have such a cool job that i'm actually here today to show you guys what it's like to be a zookeeper it's pretty awesome all right guys you ready let's go so first things first we get a positive check on all of our animals essentially that means that we go and make sure that everybody's um you know alive um they're healthy they're not stuck in something nobody's bleeding from a ripped off toenail um just because we don't have any night keepers here we want to make sure that we get that first thing in the morning so we're gonna go check our bird of prey right now these animals are being a bird of prey their main source of catching their food is their really strong sharp feet to protect myself so i'm going to use this glove right here oh good boy cable owls are a little grumpy that's why he's clapping hey buddy we're actually getting weight today we're trying away all of our animals at least every month um birds i try and do every other week it was pretty good at it all right we weigh 11.91 grams perfect so i'm looking at gable in the sunlight he's doing kind of like a physical body check making sure that his beak isn't scratched up sometimes he likes to fall and kind of gets it scratched checking his toenails making sure they look good not overgrown not ripped off and he looks good and we're nice and fluffy which is a sign of a happy bird all of our birds except for our owl eat in the morning okay and we're ready aurora's getting half of a rabbit today zookeeping is definitely not for the squeamish you know circle good morning i like to show him his food it's a rabbit hey buddy oh yeah you see it there you go a golden eagle pellet it looks like this one uh he ate a quail so this is a a primary winged feather from probably the left wing here we can actually take this feather um and cut it and our veterinarian can kind of put like a little stint in it and put it back on his wings so it looks like he has all of his feathers again and helps them with their balance and everything [Music] oh yeah a mixture of fish and chicken varieties spice of life in the zoo world and then we change it up every day they get a mix between whole prey items like quail rabbits rats pinkies mice and then also some donated items we get a lot of meat donated to us here so it includes fish chicken and what we call chunk meat which is essentially steak he's ready and he's right here look he's bringing it today is catfish actually one of our keepers went fishing and caught a huge catfish so we shared that between all the animals yeah they love it especially our otters his beak is very sharp um and we've worked a lot on my relationship to make sure that he doesn't bite me there you go [Music] there you go so lurch's feet they're not like a typical bird of prey foot he's more of a scavenger than a hunter so they're not as strong but i still wear this glove so he has a nice perch to sit on it's a little bit thicker than our hands hello buddy usually we work on some training in the mornings he is what we call a very tactile animal he does like to be touched and that is very helpful for our veterinary examinations we can actually feel what we call his heel we can see you know if his muscles are nice nice and strong we can also check his wings we're working on allowing our wings to be touched did i have enough i was so allowed to do his thing but um we can kind of manipulate his wings and he lets us we make it a positive thing for him um we can actually check for abscesses or wounds in the future if he were to have any so it's all about preventative care for our animals all right so we're gonna go clean some bird poop bald eagles the date very important um today we have some salmon and some whole quail we make sure we get the right nutrition um to everybody so go ahead and feed them clean their exhibit check their fence um in the zoo world animals typically live a lot longer than they would in their natural habitat just because they're not fighting for um you know competition for resources food you know mates finding a safe spot to sleep at nighttime so they have pretty long easy lives here you hungry we're gonna scrub the feces check the fence check for any uh pellets that they may have cast um just make sure our pond is working and running it's kind of funny to see them like running everywhere hello good morning what are we is this a sammy this is a sammy who are the mother and father to their son sam all right good girl all right sammy all right [Music] um eat a lot of food they have a very fast metabolism so they typically eat about four times a day make sure that there are no spots that the others can escape out of making sure that nothing has fallen into our been on accident checking their pond we'll make little mini badger meatballs she's extremely smart we're going to place some marks down for her target target good that she's paying attention and she's looking towards me for direction spin um it's great using this tool um as you can see i can kind of manipulate where where she goes target okay um i can have her go away from me um or i can ask her to come near me right there um it also gives our guests um a really good opportunity to be able to view her from that you know we're working on getting her to stand up a little higher good girl you want belly rubs stop you under the belly rubs and as much fun as this is this is actually very valuable honest if she were to ever have an abscess or an injury um underneath you know on her belly we could actually kind of touch that and access that through this behavior right here um so now that we've checked um our animals we've made sure everybody is alive we've put everybody out on display for the public we are open now um so now it's time for kind of projects cleaning um and making some animal diets so we'll go clean our otter holding clean some windows and make some animals [Music] okay so what we're about to do next is sort produce that um walmart has donated to us it's where a large majority of our animal food actually comes from so we're very grateful that we get a lot of stuff donated to us so let's go ahead and do that [Music] so today is friday so we'll be making sunday's diets we have nice [Music] good boy we're a little shy today good you target good target good spin good [Music] good boy good boy over good boy target [Music] good again that's why this target tool can i see him talk it good [Music] all right water good boy and we're out of food hi what are you doing all right guys so we've done a bunch of really amazing things here today at zoo montana we've been about this for about four and a half hours now it's only half of the day we still have a lot left to do but we've fed some animals we've cleaned some out we've done some training some enrichment we've taken a tour of the zoo talked to some people got to see one of my favorite guests here but there's still a lot to do so i'll go take my lunch break and hopefully see you guys here in montana bye you

Channel: WoKe Creative

Views: 25,431

Rating: 4.9225807 out of 5

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Id: 43Ywlz-J07o

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020