Keeper Shadow in Portland

This week I got a very special opportunity. I was able to travel up to the Oregon Zoo in Portland and spend a day shadowing their keepers. This was an amazing experience for me and I learned a lot. I cannot post all of my pictures as there are far too many, but I will share a bit of what I saw and learned with you guys. I spent most of my time in the Marine Life area as they care for the polar bears and sun bears. Nicole was extremely helpful and gave me some ideas on training. It was great to see how their program ran. I even got to see them get weights on the polar and sun bears!

Sun Bear getting some morning meds in pudding. Yum!

Conrad with toys

Awesome bear firehose bed. I want to make one! But that is a whole new project.

Saying hi

Big Claws

Open. My next goal for the black bears! This is a great tool for checking their teeth!

They are trained to lay on their side.

I was also able to spend some time with one of the keepers for the black bears. Julie was also very helpful and it was really great to bounce training ideas around with another keeper from a different facility. I was able to see some training they do with their black bears.

Target

Touch desensitization.

I just want to note that she is just lightly touching the bear with the stick. This is a great way to work the bear up to things like hand injections. Hand injecting allows us to give the animal its' vaccines or any medications it may need without having to anesthetize it. The more we can do like this the less we need to put the animal under anesthesia for medical work, which is a lot of stress taken off their bodies. This is a great method I would love to eventually work into our program.

Their youngest bear, also named Takoda!

Lastly I was able to see some sleeve training done with one of their monkeys. She is diabetic and sleeve trained to allow them to do her insulin shots. As I am working on sleeve training our black bear Donna this was really interesting for me to see.

A Big Big thanks to all the keepers at Oregon Zoo who allowed me to follow them around for the day and pester them with questions. It was a fantastic learning experience for me.

And this was way too cool not to post. While I was there I visited their Lorakeet Landing exhibit. You can  buy a small container of nectar and go in and feed it to the birds. It was so much fun!

Wildlife Safari will be opening a similar Budgie exhibit with the addition of the new Australia exhibit in our Village area. Be sure to come check it out once it's open!