The role of animal welfare in wildlife parks, zoos, and aquariums goes well beyond accreditation standards, says Katie Hall, Director of Animal Behavior and Wellbeing at Minnesota Zoo. It is a science that drives virtually every day-to-day and long-term decision, from food sourcing to ground maintenance.
At the Minnesota Zoo, teams come together to ensure that the wellness of individual animals and groups is closely monitored and communicated. That includes six very different departments, from aquatics and marine collections to the Zoo’s Tropics, Minnesota Trail, and farm animals.
“Everyone that works at the Zoo believes it is part of their job to support animal welfare, even if they are not part of the care team. They walk the talk, and I love that,” said Hall.
Being successful, says Hall, requires consistent, high-quality information that is readily shared across teams. Her priorities are two-fold: a proximate goal of standardizing animal welfare assessments and centralizing that data where teams can easily track changes over time; and an ultimate goal of bringing people together for conversations, making evidence-based decisions, and providing the best wellbeing in a focused way for some of our more vulnerable animals.
But monitoring and recording behavioral and other animal welfare information can look very different even within a single institution. When Hall moved to Minnesota from Sedgwick County Zoo (Kansas), she found that various departments often took different approaches to recording behavioral data.
“Each questionnaire from each department was slightly different, they were in Word, in Excel, or handwritten on pieces of paper, and they all had different scales of measurement. This made finding a piece of information and tracking it through time challenging,” said Hall.
For Quality of Life assessments, some teams involved the veterinarians more than others, and so veterinarians identified an opportunity to better integrate decision-making between teams by migrating these assessments to ZIMS Care and Welfare module.
To gain a more cohesive approach, the Zoo began by forming a joint division with Care, Health, Conservation, and Behavior (CHCB) departments all represented. The group meets regularly to consider challenges affecting the animals.
For example, when the CHCB team came together to discuss a problematic boom in fly populations in the farm area, the option of spraying insecticide was quickly doused for all the right reasons: concern for the conservation butterfly house nearby; the potential for harm to animals, people, and the environment from the chemicals; and impact on milk being obtained from the dairy cattle.
“What seems to be a relatively simple problem and straightforward solution often has far-reaching implications. Convening Care, Health, Conservation, and Behavior in a collective dialog makes it possible to reach better solutions,” said Hall.
“We developed a list of questions and a five-point scale and presented it to animal care staff and volunteers for feedback. We had conversations about how to monitor the well-being of different animals and groups, and workshopped different measurements for specific indicators until we came to an agreement. It was so helpful to bring everyone together because I got the sense that people felt genuinely listened to, and that the conversations facilitated a One Team approach,” said Hall.
Establishing the timeframe for the next conversation or the next check-in was built in, whether that might be quarterly, weekly, or triggered by a set of events.
In one case, care and veterinary staff sought to understand the cause of occasional shivering in an older female bald eagle named Madison. Katie worked with the keepers to identify this and other behaviors and environmental inputs to monitor in the ZIMS Care and Welfare Module, supplemented with behavioral observations to get multiple channels of data.
“The lack of consistent data made it more difficult to identify the cause. Was the shivering due to being cold? Was it pain-related, possibly stemming from a broken humerus when the eagle was much younger? Or was it an indication that Madison was anticipating some event, such as being moved off-habitat during extreme low temperatures?,” said Hall.
The team pulled information from the available sources, graphing data from winter 2019-20 and fall/winter 2023 to spot patterns. By looking at hours of the day and temperatures, they found that Madison was observed shivering when the temperature was 74 degrees. These data indicate that shivering is less likely to be due to temperature. Nonetheless, the team added radiant heat panels to Madison’s enclosure.
Behavioral data from winter 2019-20 showed that she was shivering only in the morning. Currently, she is observed shivering in the morning and in the mid-day. The main difference between the timeframes is that she is now receiving a second dose of medications. As such, the team believes her pain is well managed throughout the day, and that shivering may not be pain related, though they cannot rule it out entirely.
“Behavioral data does not support the temperature or pain hypotheses well, and based on Madison’s history of being moved to a warmer space when temperatures drop, the team believes the shivering is in anticipation of this or some other event,” said Hall. To address this, keepers have begun working on crate training with Madison, to ease any stress around moves.
In another case, data recorded in ZIMS for Care and Welfare is being used to track and analyze fecal scores for older moose Aurora and her younger companions Huckleberry and Juniper. The close monitoring occurs during a seasonal change in diet, in particular the transition from fresh to silage browse as winter arrives.
“The team is offering a combination of Mazuri Wild Herbivore, looking for the best balance for Aurora,” said Hall. “As we work to get more of Aurora’s fecal scores in the acceptable range, her data informed our decision to support her gut health with probiotics for the next 12 weeks. We will use the data from ZIMS Care and Welfare to inform medical and dietary management of the animal, and will reassess at frequent intervals to determine the diet that works best for her.”
The Zoo is establishing a welfare assessment program with four types of assessments, all in ZIMS Care and Welfare module: a bi-annual assessment for every individual and group in each department; an assessment triggered by significant events, such as an enclosure change, illness, or events like concerts at the zoo; a weekly quality-of-life assessment; and the individual daily assessment.
“With the bi-annual assessment, you get a 30,000-foot view and action items that can affect the wider population, while the other assessments inform changes that more deeply impact the individual,” said Hall.
Hall meets with each animal department monthly to discuss when and how assessments are being done – and whether the assessments are meeting the needs of both animals and staff. Veterinarians regularly join the discussion, and they host weekly animal health rounds in which teams discuss chronic or other issues.
The animal welfare team, which includes Hall and two additional staff, has established a core set of 20 questions that form the basis of each assessment. Those are adapted with input from each department.
Anything that does not come back as a “5” (or best), receives a closer look, says Hall. “We get the right resources involved, such as do we need to add UV lights in the Tropics aviary, do we need adaptions to the training stalls for the farm area.”
What’s next: Hall and her team of two will select volunteers to supplement their work. “We want to drum up excitement around what we are doing, and recruit volunteers that understand the importance,” she said.
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