I had to make peanut butter pinecones for the Bear’s enrichment the other day and tried something a little different. I rolled the peanut butter pinecones in shredded carrots, added just a few raisins and drizzled with a little honey. Gus Bear loved them! The grass was too high that day for me to get a good picture of him eating them though.
Bear Enrichment
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As Keeper Jill mentioned we had our annual AAZK Rummage Sale on May 5th. This year I baked dog treats to sell.
Homemade Dog Treats
They were dog tested and approved. Below is the receipe from
“The Ultimate Dog Treat Cookbook”
~~~Veggie Treats~~~
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup finely diced celery
1/4 finely chopped broccoli
1/4 cup finely diced red or yellow bell pepper (no seeds)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
(I altered this a bit- I used whole wheat flour, diced the carrots, and added extra celery and broccoli instead of using bell peppers- just to use what I already had at home)
Hi Kimberly!
It was great meeting you yesterday at the Wolf Overlook and finding out all those cool things about the Red Wolf Rehab program. I’m definitely going to follow this blog more often.
As a side note, I was reading your post about homemade dog treats and was a little alarmed that GARLIC is included. I’ve worked as a certified vet tech for many years and have seen garlic poisonings in dogs a few times, which wasn’t pretty. So I ask that you educate yourself about this possibility when garlic is used in recipes and I’d recommend not giving garlic and onion. Please read the link I provided from the ASPCA.
Again, thanks for all the great info yesterday and keep up the awesome work with the carnivores!
ASPCA website on garlic toxicity in dogs:
http://www.aspca.org/Pet-care/ask-the-expert/ask-the-expert-poison-control/treats-with-garlic.aspx
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I grabbed the camera when I saw Keeper Jill walking down the hall with a shrimpcicle. What the heck is a shrimpcicle, you ask? Shrimp frozen into an icecube = enrichment for the water turtles.
Below are several pictures of 3 of our water turtles enjoying their afternoon enrichment
Click on the picture below to see it closer up
What a brilliant idea
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Here is a picture of Galileo opossum. You can see he has a keen eye for design by picking out paint swatches when he visited some museum employees.
He arrived with his brother, Einstein in September of 2011. He and his brother came to us from a rehabber that found them after their mother was killed by a car. They were too used to people and too young to be released. The two later were put into Sonny’s old exhibit in Carolina Wildlife. Sonny was then moved into our EHR and lives in a big playpen. In the beginning the brothers did well living together, but later had to be separated and one moved into the EHR because they started to quarrel too much. Now Einstein and Galileo switch places when the exhibit is super cleaned so you never know who you may see in the exhibit.
Here we are letting Galileo investigate the 3rd floor where we have offices. He was able to get a change of pace and visit people to get used to them because he is used as a program animal.
Thus far, we are able to find out that Galileo loves to walk around the halls like our old opossum Beaker used to. He also loves to do a clicking noise and is more concerned with scenting and sliming things then he is with trying to find things to eat.
How did I miss this visit? I could have given him an almond.
Im sure you were busy having a baby or something.
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If you have read any of my posts before- you know that I am a huge fan of lemurs. One of the biggest reason I have an animal crush on lemurs is because I train our Ring Tailed Lemurs here at the Museum.
"left hand" behavior
I’ve posted about training before, check it out here, but this time I want to talk about my progress. The most important behavior I am working on with the ring tails right now is ‘crate’. By crate I mean that they go into the crate- don’t come bouncing out and allow me to close the door- while remaining calm. The end goal will be to crate them for vet procedures, using one or two treats only, and move them- in the crate all the way to the main building, which of course requires a ride in one of our vehicles. This trained behavior will alleviate several unpleasant aspects of catching lemurs. First the stress on the lemurs themselves will be minimal. Once they are comfortable with me shutting the crate door and picking them up, the rest is quite easy. When our ring tails get stressed they poo and it’s not pleasant. Typically it involves poor Sherry getting a bit covered in yucky lemur stress poo thus having to change her clothes several times in one day. So… less stress for lemurs, less poo for Sherry, and a great sense of accomplishment for me.
"crate" behavior
We’re not quite there yet, but today all 3 ring tails went into their crates, I shut the doors without issues. They stayed in for 1 minute- no issues, I picked up their crates and moved them a bit, then they sat for an additional minute- no issues. When the 2 minutes were up, I opened the door and then lemurs walked- not ran- out to claim their big reward!!! and I had a huge smile on my face! I have been this successful before but then they had some regression on the behavior, so it’s taken some time for them to get comfortable again. I’m happy to have great progress once again.
"here" behavior
Today all 3 Ring Tails went into their crates for 4 mins each. After 1 min- I picked up the crate and moved them to the other side of the stall. Click- Treats! After 2 mins- I picked up the crate and moved them out of the stall into the keeper space. Click-Treats! After 3 mins- I picked up the crate and moved them back to their original spot. Click-Treats! After 4 mins- I opened the door and they got a big reward! Great day!
That’s awesome! Good job to all four of you!
That’s super exciting! Good for you!
Thanks Guys!
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I wanted to share some Lemur photos.
If you remember back several months ago- we had two interns Casey and Jessica who did their enrichment project for the lemurs- it was a teepee tree. We still use it and here are some recent photos of the ring tails climbing on it.
Lycus climbing
Cassandra and Satyrus climbing on their enrichment
As for the red ruffed lemurs, we were treating Iris twice a day with medicine that we put in mashed banana, which often meant her sister and mother also got mashed banana as a treat. Here are photos of Jethys (Iris’ sister) who was so “excited” about her banana- she took the bowl right out of my hand and held it herself- hahaha
Jethys holding her own bowl with both hands
One hand!
When she was finished she dropped it on the ground
Hope you enjoyed- here’s Lycus to say GOODBYE
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The other Friday, I hear a radio call for me to come up to the farmyard. I walk up and see a huge opossum sniffing around in the pine straw. I thought to myself….”gees, that’s a huge opossum and why is it out in the daytime? and why are Aaron and Katy so close to it?”
Turns out it was our opossum Sonny, out for a walk.
Building castles in the sand
Lightning thought it was VERY interesting and was looking at him the whole time.
Hahha that’s just great.
It always makes me so happy when the critters are out and about!
LOL!!! Lightning looks like he wants to talk to you about how inconsiderate it is to have a opossum near his home!!!
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Aaron gave me some interesting looking popsicle sticks for lemur enrichment which I immediately had another idea for.
Keeper Sarah had some down time as well and decided to take part in my project.
So we made a little village for the degus.
I love it….the museum animals have such kind, thought full and funny keepers!
cute village!! If only my CITY is that clean.
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One of my favorite duties as an Animal Keeper is training with the Ring Tailed Lemurs. We train many of the animals at the museum using operant conditioning. When I first started here, I was familiar with training, I used positive reinforcement for several animals at my previous job- a Serval, African Crested Porcupine, Binturong, several birds including large Macaws, a Raven, Crow, Hawks and Owls.
Serval
Binturong
Even Rats- But it wasn’t until working here at the Museum that I really got into Operant Conditioning. We use training for 3 reasons- husbandry, enrichment, and bonding.
Husbandry – anything having to do with taking care of that animal. Shifting between areas, vet care, travel (crate or trailer) etc
Enrichment- let’s face it these animals live in the same place all the time, training allows them to move, think, react, predict, interact with other animals. They are using tons of physical and mental energy during training sessions.
Bonding- if an animal is sick, injured, or, in the rare case, has escaped- their trainer would be the first to respond and hopefully have a strong enough bond with that animal so that help can be provided.
Can you see Jill's hand signal and clicker?
Each Keeper here trains a group of animals
Katy- Bears (4)
Mikey- Bears (4)
Marilyn- Red Ruffed Lemurs (3)
Kimberly- Ring Tailed Lemurs (3)
Jill- Pigs (2)
Sarah- Donkey and little goats (3)
Kent- Steer and big goat (2)
Mikey training Gus bear for our training consultant Julie Grimes
And each animal has been trained to do different behaviors. The Ring Tailed Lemurs for example have learned the following- scale, up, down, left hand, right hand, touch, jump, follow, off, here, come, target, crate. Chummix may know the behavior “come” but Kent may have a completely different hand signal for it than I do for the ring tails.
Cassandra during a training session
Below are a couple older blog posts about training-
Marilyn’s post about training Chummix- here
Kristen’s post with video of Cassidy training- here
Larry’s post shows Yona’s first session with Katy- here
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If you have never thought about it,ponder for a moment what it might be like to have to stand on one surface forever. You’re probably thinking how uncomfortable that would be. Well, for humans it would be because we aren’t made to stand for hours on end and jump off at a moments notice. We are capable of doing these things but our body wasn’t designed that way. Birds are different, they stand for a majority of their lives and their weights and joints are made differently.
At the museum, we need to make sure that what our birds stand on is proper for them. If not, they can develop foot sores.Next time you are at the museum, look at our owl exhibits and see if you notice these things:
Different woods- different branches of different kinds of trees have different textures. This can help with with their nails and a lot of times the birds like to either strip the bark off with their feet or beak.
Different sizes- the diameter of the branches differ for different kinds of birds. The feet have to be a comfortable fit with the branch, not too large and not too small. We put in different sizes for comfort as well as giving the birds foot “exercise” so the bird has to flex his feet for the different diameters.
Different textures- sometimes our perches are wrapped in foam,AstroTurf ,rope or neoprene. This can help with the comfort of the bird if the bird is a little bit older and needs a little more padding. Its also something that’s different for the bird.
Here the birds are perched on rope with an astro-turf perch pictured as well
Photo:Richard Brunotte
Stability- Of course all of our perches are safely secure but sometimes we purposefully secure them so they have a little bounce to them. This simulates how branches are in the wild since they usually have a little spring in them and the birds have to use their muscles to balance on them.
The last is my favorite.If you have followed our blog then you already know about out older Red Tailed Hawk, Misha.
Since he lives outside and is an older bird we want him to be very comfortable. When the nights get VERY cold we bring out birds inside, sometimes when its cooler and not bad enough to bring them in we turn on Misha’s perch.
Heated- Birds lose heat through their legs and feet.So, we decided to give extra heat through a perch rather then using a bulb or heater. Our exhibits department came up with a brilliant idea of heating with Christmas light bulbs. His perch is made of metal pole where several strands of Christmas lights inside. The lights give off enough heat to warm and not burn and the perch is wrapped with comfy and soft neoprene.
This is an example of bumble foot. A painful condition that can be helped with proper perches.
so attentive
I agree.. so attentive and so compassionate towards the bird’s needs.
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It’s like carrot cake but with pine cones!
Let me know the next time you give these to the bears. I’d love to come down and watch!
The next time the bears are scheduled to get peanut butter pine cones is Wed the 23rd. I’m off that day but I believe Aaron will be working in ETW- give him a radio call in the a.m.