The pig barn houses three domestic pigs and two domestic rabbits. In the mornings, I typically feed the pigs their breakfast, which consists of a measured amount of pellets. One of the pigs also receives a specific quantity of medicine mixed into her morning meal. While the pigs consume their breakfast, the other intern and I scoop up the manure around the exhibit and rinse out and refill their water bowls. To extend the animals’ feeding time, we may fill enrichment toys with produce so the pigs have to roll around the toy to make the food come out of the holes. The particular enrichment toys we used on Thursday were plastic Arrowhead water containers with circular holes cut in the sides, allowing the chopped produce to fall out in intervals. Liz showed us other forms of enrichment, which included scattering produce around the exhibit and brushing the pigs.

A hotspot of the Children’s Zoo is the Contact Yard of the goat and sheep barn.  As an intern, I may supervise the Contact Yard to ensure that all the visitors follow the rules posted. There are eleven goats and four sheep housed in the barn, and visitors oftentimes enjoy brushing them. The sheep can be a bit skittish, but the Pygmy goats are quite tolerant of brushing and petting. Although visitors may assume the Pygmy goats are overweight or pregnant, the goats are actually bred to be shorter but they still have the same sized digestive system, making their bellies appear proportionally wider.

 

Some of my favorite animals on String 7 are the five ring tailed lemurs and two blue-eyed lemurs. During my first day, the other intern and I got the opportunity to accompany Liz into the lemur exhibit and help her with the morning feeding. The male lemurs are subordinate to the females, so we scattered food throughout the exhibit to ensure they all had access to it. To improve the lemurs’ mental health, the zoo keepers provide specific types of enrichment every day and mark them on the calendar.

In addition to the hands-on experience under the string’s zoo keeper, interns also attend weekly classes and behind the scenes tours. This week’s class titled “Emergency Response in a Zoo Setting” focused on how the Oakland Zoo responds in emergency situations. The various situations included both natural disasters and animal escapes, which could result in calling a Code Yellow, Code Red or Code Pink. The other intern class highlighted public interaction strategies with the zoo guests.