Think the holidays are a zoo at your house? Kids acting like wild animals? In-laws lying around like sloths?
Try feeding more than 3,000 actual wild animals every day, 365 days a year. And you thought your sister’s kids were picky. Denver Zoo keepers have to know which gorilla needs Activia yogurt for her sensitive tummy, and which lizard prefers wiggling worms to static crickets.
While the human food at the zoo could stand some upgrading, the animals there eat as well as any high-roller at a downtown steakhouse — organic greens, lean beef, Western Slope apples.
Animal chefs
In some ways, the animals- only commissary resembles a restaurant kitchen: stainless- steel prep tables where “sous chefs” chop fruits and vegetables; three walk-in coolers stocked with organic kale, bananas, squash, beef, mutton, fish, shrimp, scallops and clams; and a pantry whose shelves hold cherry gelatin, apple juice and Celestial Seasonings decaffeinated green tea.
But the chubs of “premium feline meat,” whole frozen mice and live mealworms tell another story.
“The animals eat the same quality food as humans. It’s premium-grade stuff,” says Rick Bahl, zoo commissary administrator, who oversees the food-supply chain from grower to purveyor to commissary. Think of him as the zoo’s executive chef, managing the $700,000 annual food budget, which comes from public funds, zoo income and private donations.
Bahl has been working with local sellers to “help us build a bridge to local farmers.” Most of the zoo’s hay — the animals consume 388 tons a year — comes from Fruita, Yampa and Meeker.
This fall, the zoo bought apples from Bolton Orchards in Grand Junction, and Federal Fruit and Produce, the region’s largest wholesaler to restaurants and grocery stores, keeps the zoo stocked with a wide variety of restaurant-quality salad fixings.
As humans seek more natural-food sources, so do zoos, and like us, they have to pay more for organic. Growers Organic, a Denver wholesaler that connects family farms with local buyers, donated organic pumpkins for the animals to play with (and eat). The company also supplies organic fruits and veggies to Vitamin Cottage, Whole Foods, and high-end restaurants Vesta, Rioja and Potager.
Like a chef de cuisine, commissary worker James Purcell, a former restaurant cook and nine-year Denver Zoo veteran, has tasted “just about everything” he prepares for the animals. That includes the crunchy mealworms.
“I tell people I’m the animal chef,” says Purcell. “People say to me, ‘You must not know how to cook.’ I say, ‘I work for one of the most prestigious kitchens in the state.’ ”
Seriously, what restaurant chef is assured of a roar of approval every time he serves a rare steak?
Designer diets
While we might sneak table scraps to the dog or let the kitty lick the cereal bowl, zoo animals require more consistency in their diets.
Since 1992, the zoo has consulted with Nancy Irlbeck, an animal-science professor at Colorado State University. The zoo-nutrition field is a young one, she says on a stroll through the snowy, quiet zoo. “It’s almost like we are on display and they’re watching us,” she says as she walks past snow-dusted buffalo.
The metal-mesh feeders in the Denver Zoo pachyderm house look like simple boxes of hay, but they are built so that the elephants have to expend energy to get their food. They reach in with their trunks through a smallish opening, pulling out a mouthful at a time. This keeps them from eating all the hay at once, replicates natural foraging behavior and keeps them from getting bored, Irlbeck says.
Back when she first started with the Denver Zoo, many of the animals ate dog food. “We had a lot of fat, fat animals,” says Irlbeck.
These days, 75 to 80 percent of zoo animals’ nutrition come from “complete diets,” designed and manufactured for specific species, such as Mazuri flamingo diet, made by a division of Purina. The feed replaces the shrimp and other crustaceans flamingos eat in the wild with fish proteins and a natural pinkish pigment to give them their signature color. At $69 per 50-pound bag, the zoo works hard to keep interlopers — geese and other birds — from stealing the expensive pellets.
Elephants supplement their grass hay intake with vitamin- and mineral-balanced food made at Ranch-Way Feeds in Fort Collins. Made from a base of soybeans, alfalfa, salt and wheat, “elephant cake” is similar to cattle feed and is sold by the ton.
Because it’s not possible to duplicate what animals eat in the wild or, in some cases, even to know what they eat, zoo nutritionists use domestic animals’ nutrient requirements as models. Cattle can provide a model for buffalo; sheep and goats for antelope; and horses for rhinos and elephants. Not surprisingly, human dietary requirements are used for some primate diets. And like us, the animals will indulge in what they like — such as grapes, the candy of their diets — and ignore what’s good for them.
“The apes are the most spoiled. They get sugar-free pudding, candy and Jell-O treats,” says Bahl, the commissary boss. “They consume lots of greens, sunflower seeds, raw peanuts and cooked noodles. One (Jo Ray K) gets Activia yogurt because she has a sensitive stomach, and canned pumpkin helps digestion, too.”
But sometimes figuring out what the animals like comes down to pure trial and error, says head zoo curator Rick Haeffner. “We got in these new lizards and this was astounding to us. No zoo had experience with them. They live in treetops in Indonesia and Malaysia, so we assumed they’d be eating insects that crawled along the trees. But they weren’t interested. One day the keeper held an earthworm out and the lizard grabbed it like a piece of spaghetti and gobbled it down. Three weeks later, they started breeding.”
Room service
Purcell and the other “animal chefs” take turns delivering the prepped food to all 3,500 animals in the 80-acre complex. Deliveries start around 7 a.m. Some of the feeding takes place within the displays, and some food is served in “private dining rooms” behind the public exhibits. Zookeepers use a variety of methods to serve the animals.
Long tongs ensure snakes and reptiles get the foods they need and keep human hands out of reach of pointed teeth. Bob the snapping turtle likes raw chicken breasts, which his keeper dangles from tongs into his strong jaws. “He likes chicken, but he also likes to eat small turtles — they were disappearing,” says Irlbeck, pointing out a clear divider that keeps the little guys safe from Bob.
Outside, in the elephant display, feeders are shaped like tree trunks with nooks and crannies for their food. It not only keeps the food off the ground, but encourages exercise and forces them to share.
African banded mongooses root around a faux termite mound where keepers hide crickets.
“You put the fish in the water as opposed to on the land for a certain turtle,” says Haeffner. “For some birds, we put the bowl up in the tree as opposed to on the ground. We add mealworms — the moving around attracts the birds’ attention.”
Where the animals eat depends on their “management situation,” says Irlbeck. If several animals share an exhibit, some might eat on display and others might be fed behind the scenes, to be sure each gets the proper nutrition. “The public expects to see a mama, papa and baby bear, but in most cases, the papa’s going to get the most food,” she says, so keepers might separate the bears for feeding to ensure that the growing young and mothers get the nutrients they need.
The big cats eat “in their bedrooms,” Irlbeck says. Once a day, raw meat is set out for the lions, tigers and snow leopards. If they don’t eat it, it’s removed, for it spoils quickly.
“These animals are too valuable as ambassadors for their species to risk them on a questionable diet,” says Haeffner. Their keepers do form a bond with the animals, but must remain cognizant of not spoiling them with food.
“It’s a basic part of their life whether you’re talking about a shrimp or a gorilla. Reproduction and eating are the two biggest driving forces in the animal kingdom,” says Haeffner. “Feeding is the biggest connection the animal has with its caretaker. We want the keepers to think of the animals as their animals, not just organisms in a cage.”
Kristen Browning-Blas: 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com
A zoo’s who of animals
Zoo Lights runs 5:30-9 p.m. daily, including today, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.
See the animals eat:
• African penguin feeding: 10:15 a.m and 3:30 p.m.
• Sea lion show: 10:30 a.m.
• Pachyderm demonstration: 11:30 a.m. • Red River hog feeding: noon
• Gorilla feeding: 12:15 p.m.
• Bird bug toss (kids can feed the birds): 2 p.m. (Keepers often give apples to the elephants and grain to Bert the hippo)
Wild vs. zoo
GIDGET THE CALIFORNIA SEA LION
Diet in the wild: fish, squid, octopus, squid, crab, clam and lobster
At the zoo: 13 pounds per day of capelin, herring and mackerel, fish “chow,” and vitamin and mineral supplements
JO RAY K THE GORILLA
In the wild: leaves, shoots, pith, stems and fruit
At the zoo: vegetables, fruits, primate biscuits and Activia yogurt
BERT THE HIPPO
In the wild: grasses
At the zoo: grass, hay, grain, vitamin and mineral supplements, and arthritis medication
By the numbers
395 pounds of meat and seafood consumed daily
455 pounds of produce eaten daily
1,500 pounds hay and alfalfa fed daily
2.1 million mice, crickets and worms yearly
$700,000 budget for food
