Next week, the happiest day of the year will be upon us, World Smile Day! I am often asked which my favourite species are to work with at the park. It must be said, the little guys never fail to put a smile on my face every day. With the famous saying “good things come in…
For this edition of Matts travels we are jetting off around the world and taking 12-hour flight to South Africa. With travel restrictions a thing of the past hopefully, I found myself in a position where I had the opportunity to go back to South Africa. I’ve been very fortunate to have travelled there twice…
Let’s jump straight in with my blog this week about who is who in our Ringtail Lemur walkthrough. A lot of people ask about how we tell our ringtail lemurs apart. Well for the keepers that work with them on a daily basis, this is very easy. However, for those of you that don’t know,…
We have been very busy training new behaviours including crate training with many species recently and I wanted to update you on what the animals have been learning. Macaws So, I’ve been making friends with the macaws and teaching them to follow the target. They’ve picked it up nicely and allowed me to move onto…
If you remember from a previous blog of mine that majority of the primate keepers’ least favourite job is cleaning the Mandrills. Since then, we have a new keeper, Holly, who has fallen hard for the cuteness of the mandrill troop. So, she has asked me to write a blog about them and here we…
I’ve got another Guess Who for you this week (find my previous Guess Who here). This time all the animals are found here at Wingham to give it a zookeeper week theme. All the answers can be found at the bottom for you. 1:• I come in lots of colours• I love to make a…
A vital skill in looking after animals is being able to identity when they may be sick or injured and knowing how to treat this. One of the easiest ways to tell an unwell animal is knowing its behaviour. Animals are incredibly good at hiding pain. So, by knowing what’s “normal” for your animal and…
You may be wondering what we feed our leaf eating (browse) animals during our winter months when there are much fewer leaves available for them to eat. Well, the answer is browse silage, but what is it? First there are a few questions to ask, beginning with; What is a browse feeder? Within the animal…
28th April is National Superhero Day and what makes a good superhero? Well, super powers of course! While we consider all the superpowers we could possibly have, many animals already have some. Ok, so I’m not talking X-ray eyes or laser beams but they’re still pretty amazing. Naturally, I’ve got to look at my own…
One of my favourite pastimes as a zookeeper is eves dropping on the public’s conversations about the animals in front of them. I do enjoy a little chuckle to myself when passing folk stop at the binturong thinking they’re looking at the moon bears or when adults in particular mix up the orange and black…
