Hi, I'm Debs. I'm a Bird Keeper here at the zoo.
So people may not realise but there is actually a real science to the way we care for our animals here,
right from the variety of diet we offer them, through to the training
so that they can participate in their own health care.
First thing today though, is we're off to the kea.
Come. Good.
Station. Good.
So looking after our birds is really important, and a big part of their health care
is giving them a once-over body check. Now we don't want to have to catch them up
and take them to the vets every time we do this, so we do training with them
and in this way they can actively participate in their own health care.
So today with Tapui I can check in his beak, we'll do beak,
Good boy. And I can look at under his feet as well.
And we check that his feet are in good condition. Feet.
Good boy. Wings. Good boy. Nice work.
So because of the strong relationship that we build with kea we're able to do this
and it's really stress-free for them. So it's a great way,
yeah, that we can make sure they're in good health and they're happy too.
Okay, so kea are really intelligent birds so we try and do something
a little bit different for them every day for behavioural enrichment.
I'm just preparing food for our mixed species Australian aviary.
So today we're providing a seed mix, we've also got some whole pellet,
so that's for our complete nutritional pellet for our large parrots, the red tail black cockatoos.
We have a fruit and seed mix as well. Now we've got sprouted seed here,
really high in nutrition, and also provides some greens for the seed eating birds.
Our finches get chopped greens. So these are ground up seashell mix, it helps with digestion,
and also as a calcium supplement. Last but not least, is our egg mix and this is for birds that eat insects
so it's got insectivore mix in it, and it provides all of those nutrients for them as well.
So it's really important that we provide the right nutrients for all of the birds in our care,
so that's why we go through and all of the resources that will be available
to them in the wild, we make sure that we provide for them here as well.
So I'm just putting stab fruit out for the birds. Putting fruit around the aviary means that the birds can
forage for it just like they would out in the wild, and it's nice and enriching for them.
So I put all their fruit and seed mixes out today, and I've separated out their sunflower seeds.
They're very high in fat, so we use them as a high reward for their training a little bit later on today.
A really important domain of animal welfare is environment and behaviour, and these often go hand in hand.
A really good example of this is our night habitat. Kiwi of course are nocturnal animals
so they'll spend their whole night out foraging for insects. We provide a variety of different insects
and invertebrates for them, and this means the public are able to come in,
see them displaying those natural behaviours of foraging around and probing for food.
So we've just finished digging in those worms and now hopefully we'll leave
and the kiwi are going to come out and forage for them.
It's really important for me to offer the best care possible to the animals that I work with.
These guys offer a great opportunity for people to come in and connect with them
and really see what our amazing wildlife is like, and I want to know
that they're in great health and they're having excellent nutrition,
and we're doing the best that we possibly can for them.