Special Diets

Many of the animals have specialist requirements to satisfy their needs. This may involve carefully formulating balanced diets, which include dietary suppliments and food items that you might not expect like, bran flakes, honey, peanut butter and even trifle sponges! Other items we have to buy in include large amounts of meat and fish as well as specialized pelleted feeds for animals like our ostrich and flamingos. The keeping staff keep a close eye on all their animals to ensure they receive the right quantities of food. This may include extra portions for sick animals or new mothers; or might mean trying to stop over-weight animals from eating too much!

Health Care

Veterinary care is also a very important part of managing the park and we have a specialist vet who looks after the animals medical needs. Not only does this involve treating sick or injured animals but also worming routines, screening for diseases and assisting in developing animal diets and their husbandry under our Animal Health Plan.

Record Keeping

Detailed records are kept on all the animals at the park. Keepers maintain close observations of their animals and note anything interesting or out of the ordinary that goes on. These notes are written in a diary and then copied onto a database which is finally sent to the International Species Information System (ISIS) as a central database where all member zoos share their animal information.

The keepers have to maintain a carefully balanced relationship with the animals in their care. It is important that they recognise and get to know each animal but at the same time keep a certain 'professional distance'. This is because we wish the animals in our care to remain as wild as possible and to keep to natural behaviour patterns.

Behavioural Research

Every year research students visit the park to conduct behavioural studies on animal groups. This often involves weeks of study, for days on end, watching and recording the animals behaviour. Results from their observations are then written up and from this we can learn more about the lives of the animals. Often we can use the new data to re-assess the way we care for the animals and improve their living conditions.

Captive Breeding

Nearly all the animals in modern zoos and wildlife parks such as Cricket St Thomas are captive born and many are in captive breeding programmes. Many animals are exchanged between zoos to give animals populations new bloodlines and some animals are brought in from zoos in other countries. Some of the animals at the park were born in zoos in the USA, Germany and France. Likewise, animals bred at Cricket St Thomas have gone to Germany, the USA, Canada and even New Zealand!