Plan to keep zoo inmates cool & healthy

WITH THE onset of summers, the zoo authorities have started special arrangements to keep the inmates healthy during the most-unhealthy season of the year. Special arrangements including summer friendly diet and other facilities needed for some of the animals have been made. Talking to Hindustan Times, Zoo Director R Hemant Kumar said summers were a difficult time. During summers, the perspiration rate of the animals goes high and they experience heavy salt loss, which makes them dull and sick.

WITH THE onset of summers, the zoo authorities have started special arrangements to keep the inmates healthy during the most-unhealthy season of the year. Special arrangements including summer friendly diet and other facilities needed for some of the animals have been made.

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Talking to Hindustan Times, Zoo Director R Hemant Kumar said summers were a difficult time. During summers, the perspiration rate of the animals goes high and they experience heavy salt loss, which makes them dull and sick.

In order to maintain the salt level, the animals are given salt-lick cakes and salt licking of animal is another problem. “If we keep the salt brick on the ground the sanitation conscious animals would not lick it. We have to tie the salt brick with a tree available in the enclosure or we have to fix a branch of tree in the ground so that the brick could be hung upon it to attract the animal.”

The salt brick contains several minerals, which were required by the big animals to replenish the salt loss in their body. Chimpanzee, however, does not like salt licking and hence he is fed on citrus fruits like oranges whereas the ‘Kaitha’ is served to rhino, he added. He, however, said almost all the herbivorous loved eating oranges during summers while the deer family preferred salt licking.

In addition to giving summer-friendly food to the animals a wallow is developed in the Rhino enclosure for taking mud bath by the animal. Rhino cannot be healthy unless it took mud bath and covered its body with of mud. In fact the mud bath protect the animal against mosquito bites, he added.

Referring to the bird flu scare, the director said that they were still taking all necessary precautions. Fowl food to jungle cat and leopard has been stopped and they were being given goat meat or meat of fowls of the self-managed poultry at the zoo.

However, these two animals hate eating goat meat and hence their daily diet has got reduced. For about a population of 40 crocodiles in the lake, minimum required water is being put in the lake with the help of tube-well.

But the whole lake cannot be filled by tube-wells. The lake could be filled only during rains, he added.