A Day in the Life of a Zookeeper

A Day in the Life of a Zookeeper
Ever wonder what its like to share your world with a bunch of crazy critters? Tune in to find out!

Monday, April 10, 2017

A Look Back at the Weekend

The weather here was fantastic which meant lots of outside time for the whole gang.

We did some repairs on a piece of equipment and when we opened up the cover there was an adorable mommy mouse with her four babies hanging on for dear life - so adorable.  I am totally good with mice so long as they are not invading my house!  Mommy mouse stayed around for a bit to assess whether there was a possibility she might get to move back in to her winter house.  Once she figured out that it was no longer a safe place she moved on in search of  a new house.  This is not my picture but this is almost exactly what she looked like:


We also got to see the resident possum and I posted the picture of the turkey vultures.  A busy outside critter weekend.

Winston - the little pink turd - got let inside and put in his room but one of the 6 doors in his area was open without the humans realizing.  This meant he had access to the dog food - lots of dog food.  This is bad on several levels.  Pigs can literally eat themselves to death.  Needless to say - his little tummy was very full and he was very uncomfortable.  The other worry with dog food is that is the salt content.  Pigs can get what is called salt toxicity because they don't process salt well.  Thankfully - the new dog food I just moved Emma and puppies to has a fairly low salt content.  It seems instinctive  to push water and have him drink a bunch of water to wash the salt out of his system - but too much water can cause its own set of icky problems so its a fine line.  I made sure he had lots of fresh clean water available but when things like this happen I use watermelon.  Winston loves it and is has such a high water content that it helps flush the system without throwing all the electrolytes out of balance.  I skipped his dinner on Saturday evening and only gave him half his normal amount on Sunday.  Luckily he was active and still interested in food and all his systems were functioning normally.  Just to be on the safe side we did some canned pumpkin as well - it helps move things along and out the back end with all that pumpkin-y fiber.  Long story short - he is fine.  Happy and active - outside grazing and snoozing.

Puppies spend both days of the weekend outdoors.  Kitties and ferrets spent some time in the outside playspace as well.

It was a busy weekend full of spring chores - trying to get the inside and the outside ready for summer....

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