Work Experience at Folly Farm

Hi guys, today’s blog is about my recent work experience at Folly Farm in South Wales. As many of my readers will know, I spent the month of July doing work experience here, having an amazing time whilst doing so!

Although I have done a couple of different placements before, I still had no idea what to expect! Every collection is completely different to work at, and I feel that it is important that I have learnt how similar animals are managed by different collections. So on my first day, after my induction, I was delighted to find that I would be working with the critically endangered Eastern black rhino. Folly Farm is home to two lovely rhinos, Nkosi and Manyara. Nkosi came from Port Lympe and is quite young at 5 years of age, and Manyara who is 17 years old, who came from Chester Zoo. They are hoping to have a new breeding female join the collection very soon, as Manyara unfortunately cannot breed due to health reasons. Working with the rhinos was incredibly rewarding, as after all the cleaning in the morning, we were able to collect browse and use enrichment feeders to hang it up. I was really quite surprised that nettles aren’t actually good for rhinos to eat, whereas giraffes cannot get enough of them! Working with the rhinos was absolutely amazing and I was lucky enough to get to work with them a few times during my placement.

Training session with Nkosi 

On my second day, I was thrown in the deep end with the giraffes! I have never worked with such a huge straw bed in my life – I was half tempted to hide in the bed and have a nap in the afternoon! Giraffes are hard work, but they are amazing animals and worth it! Folly Farm holds 4 male hybrid giraffes – Zulu (the biggest), Rian (naughty), Sillan (cheeky), and Tahaqua (nervous), and they all seem to get on quite well! I worked with the giraffes quite a lot during my placement and was able to help out with training too! The giraffes are shut inside overnight and are provided with various enrichment items to keep them busy! We even tried marmite smeared in a tube and it went down well! In addition to the giraffes, chapman’s zebra, nile lechwe, guinea fowl and dwarf mongoose make up the section – it’s really quite large and I have huge respect for the keeper on this section!

Feeding the giraffes during the talk 

I really enjoyed working with all the animals in the zoo, and each species had their own personality! The penguin keepers introduced me to the 6 penguin chicks who were just learning to catch fish underwater! All named after Simpson’s characters, they were quite the hit with the public. In the four weeks I was there, all chicks had learnt how to catch fish underwater and in the week after I left, they all headed off down South to another collection to grow up and have their own families! Whilst I was there, the fossa and bongo headed off to other collections as part of breeding recommendations, which really showed how well good zoos contribute towards conservation.

The colony of Humboldt penguins are fed multiple times per day!

One of the largest sections on the zoo was the bird section. Such a diverse section, I worked with birds I had never even heard of before! Helping out with rebranching and training was really rewarding and I learnt so much about enclosure design and animal training too. I think the ducks and the ne ne geese were my favourite on this section – ducks are just hilarious! I was also shown incubation which was awesome – they were incubating lots of different chicken eggs when I left. I never knew how hard birds were to care for! Such specialised diets and husbandry requirements. The other large section was the small mammals section, which, like the bird section, was spread out throughout the whole zoo! Both groups of meerkats had new pups born in my time there -  very exciting! The section was so diverse, and it was really cool to see the cusimanse and have the chance to work with them – I love the noise they make when they’re given food, similar to the grunt/bark of a meerkat, but angrier.

Cusimanse! 

Folly interactive is an indoor exhibit, featuring many different reptiles, invertebrates, birds, amphibians, a sloth and some Rodrigues fruit bats. I really did enjoy working with the bats – after spending 3 months on the twilight section at Chester last year, I grew to miss the fluffy, flying potatoes! (I once saw a photo of a bat and it looked like a potato with wings, trust me). I was able to assist with the redesigning of an enclosure in Folly interactive, as well as learn about many different husbandry techniques for different species – I did however steer well clear of the tarantulas!

I was really lucky to be able to work with the carnivores a few times during my placement, something I massively enjoyed – I think I’m a carnivore girl at heart! I was able to watch and take part in training with Hugo, the male lion, and was also shown how you would train an animal to present part of its body for health checks or injections. I feel as though this is something I can definitely use in my future career. As I work with small carnivores at my part-time job, it was great to discuss diets, training, behaviour, enrichment etc and I have been able to actually use these to develop new enrichment with the animals at work.

Training Hugo

The last section I worked on was the primates. Again, this section was spread out across the whole zoo and included 3 types of lemur (red ruffed, ring tailed and black and white ruffed), common marmosets, barbary macaques, squirrel monkeys, white faced saki monkeys, red handed tamarin and a grey legged douroucouli, who’s enclosure I was able to help with redesigning! The primates were great to work with – they all had different personalities! The barbary macaques are all ex-pets/rescued, but do really well at Folly – you wouldn’t know their past unless you were told this! Primate poo is still one of the worst types of poo I have experienced, which is a shame because otherwise, primates are great fun to work with.

Overall, I had an absolutely amazing 4 weeks, and I definitely did not want to leave. It was a great experience and I couldn’t recommend the collection enough! All the keepers were easy to get along with and so willing to share their expertise! If any of the keepers end up reading this, I want to say a massive thank you for everything.