It looks like Old Man Winter has decided to wake up and take charge of the forecast as we look toward the weekend with bitterly cold temperatures. The staff is preparing their barns and stocking up on bedding and food as we start to see those temperatures dropping. There is a lot of care that goes into caring for the animals every day of the year, but it is the extreme cold that always worries me the most.

About half of the animals at the zoo are acclimated to the winter months and when it does get exceptionally cold, they have a space to get out of the weather if they desire. For the other half, we rely on maintaining adequate temperatures inside their barns or buildings to ensure their safety against the cold. Each facility is equipped with a temperature alarm system that will notify staff if the space drops below a predesignated temperature. Whether it is due to a power outage, broken heater, or just a strong wind seeping into the space, staff are always prepared to do what is necessary to ensure their safety. In the event of a power outage there are a couple of buildings designed with large generators that will kick on automatically. In other cases, barns are designed with an exterior outlet designed to power the barn by using a portable generator. And for those animal spaces that don’t have either, such as the aviary, we may use portable heaters or load them up into crates and move them to a building equipped with back-up energy and heat until we can get everything back online.

One of the newer spaces with its own back-up generator is the African lion building. If power were lost, it would immediately kick-on and ensure the wellbeing of its occupants. Most notably, is our older male, Kiota. He is 18-years and 4-months old right now, which is good for a male lion. In the wild their life span ranges from 8-15 years, versus individuals in human care that may live up to 20-years. Kiota has lived a solitary life since the passing of his mate Jasira in April 2022. At 15 and a half years old, her medical condition reached a point where decisions about her quality of life had to be made. For Jasira, it was kidney disease and staff have begun to see similar symptoms in Kiota. Staff is working to train him through operant condition to allow for blood to be drawn from his tail. The blood work will give us a lot of information into his condition and the more tests we can run without having to immobilize him, the better for all of us. If we are not successful in the coming weeks to get the blood via training an immobilization will have to take place to get the sample needed to try and get ahead of whatever is ailing him.

We can keep him warm but can’t turn back the clock. We will go into this weekend with one eye on the weather and the other on the animals. Sometimes you can do everything right, but nature is going to do what it does regardless.