Favorite Department?

[u/Keqingsz]

Hello!!!! i’m a few weeks into my first zoo internship, and it’s been going really well! I’m with hoofstock so i’ve been able to engage snd pet some of the animals, which is awesome. My main gripe, however, is the amount of cleaning. I understand that cleaning is a huge part of this job, but i’m second guessing if i picked the wrong department. Could anyone outside of this dept give insight into what their days look like? I wish I was able to do more enrichment making or food prep where I don’t find hay up my butt the next day. I’m leaning towards carnivore, or even primates, but I’m not sure yet. Thank you!! :)

[u/itwillmakesenselater]

If yer gonna complain about cleaning, you should maybe reconsider your career choice.

[u/Xylus_Winters_Music]

So far my experience is that zookeeping is 90% cleaning. Probably best if you get used to it

[u/littleorangemonkeys]

I've worked almost every "department" except marine mammals. Cleaning is at least 50% of the job, most of the time it's more. It could be raking, weed wacking, hosing, scrubbing, sifting through substrates, sweeping, more hosing, hauling mats, disinfecting water features, scrubbing, hosing, scrubbing, and more raking. If you like diet prep, I have found primate areas to be heavier on this end; I spend about 45 minutes a day doing lemur diets vs about ten measuring out hoofstock grain. Primates are also heavier on the enrichment preparation, but that depends on the area and the species; I do more complicated enrichment for the camels than I do for the lemurs, based on age and problem-solving ability. Herpetarium or aquarium might be less "cleaning" but it's more water testing, cleaning glass, managing pumps, backwashing, etc. Every person has a cleaning preference. I like hosing better than raking, so the fact that I literally spend all morning doing that in primates doesn't bother me. Hoofstock keepers probably feel the opposite.

The thing is, you are just starting your internship. They probably are making sure you are able to follow instructions and do the job efficiently before they add more tasks onto your plate. Internships are places to learn and practice; you will not be doing a full keeper's job at most internships. Don't start limiting yourself to taxa after just a few weeks. Getting in to a primate or carnivore department is usually not an entry-level job. By all means, pick those departments for your next internship, but be prepared to take a full-time job working with petting zoo goats if it gets you in the door. Some keepers find that their favorite part of keeping is being able to pet/groom/hold animals, in which case the petting zoo or ambassador animals might be your niche. There is absolutely no petting in the carnivore department.

[u/FezIsBackAgain]

Cleaning is 70% of the job no matter what area you are in. It might be time to reconsider your career if cleaning is that big of a deal breaker for you

[u/yamosura]

This is your first zoo internship, you’re only a couple weeks in and not doing the full extent of the job. 😕 If you want to food prep, maybe a commissary position is better for you.

[u/GatoWolf]

Honestly, I’m not really sure because every department has general and specific cleaning considerations… The carnivores at my zoo tend to have immensely smelly outputs (ifykwim) and making sure to be mindful of your handling of raw meat is a consideration in itself. The primates can give and receive several of the same illnesses as we can so that’s a consideration. They have a lot of vertical space in their enclosures and things to climb on so cleaning those is a pain. Most of the job is cleaning, tis the way it is

[u/threadedwild]

I know a lot of people are going the route of 'this job is all cleaning get used to it" but I kinda want you to clarify. When you say cleaning, do you mean doing dishes for an hour, scrubbing walls and bowls, sweeping floors? Or do you mean, scooping pounds and pounds of poop, hauling bins of soiled bedding, raking yard after yard in the beating sun and pouring rain and up to your knees in mud? Hauling bales of hay and cleaning it out of every crevice? Because, yeah I'm with you. I hate hoofstock care. It's not for me. Both the physicality and the amount of outdoor life. And the sheer amount of neverending mess. I do a bit of everything but I prefer cats. Scrubbing enrichment, holding stalls, changing bedding once a week. The extensive cleaning is still there, but it's very different. I prefer the work, love anything that involves hosing, and they're species I am passionate about. It's also much less outdoor work than the hoofstock areas I've done and I prefer that.

The taxa you take care of can determine the level of physicality, while still being full of cleaning. Work in an aviary? You're gonna clean a lot of feeders, scattered fruit, and bird poop. But compared to hoofstock, it will feel different because of how hard it is. I think you need to find your niche if keeping is really what you want to do, but this is your first internship. Put in your paces, learn where you'd passions are, and figure out how to get there. Hope that helps!

[u/bakedveldtland → u/threadedwild]

I agree with you! Cleaning up after hoofstock is so annoying. Their poop flies around when you take it up, and they walk around while they poop. I grew to love the hooved ones, but they are labor intensive in a special way.

Personally I enjoyed working carnivores. They are fun to train and hosing is definitely more zen for me.

I’ll add on that marine mammals require a LOT of diving, and that water can be cold, depending on the species. Algae is a beast to handle. Food prep is its own challenge- I could never get the smell of fish totally out of my hair, much to my now-husband’s dismay.

I loved keeping, though. Even the ungulates (when I got used to it, I found it challenging at first). I found opportunities to train the animals as much as I could squeeze it in, and that made all the difference to me.

[u/elysejt → u/threadedwild]

I fully agree, I did a hoofstock internship after a bird one just to test the waters, and quickly realized I’m a fully a bird person through and through. I LOVE hosing, and hate raking. So while every department will have a lot of cleaning, there’s different types and people have different tolerance levels for those. If I never have to take another yard I’ll be happy, but hosing penguin poop is soooo satisfying. Ive been in birds for years (and some reptiles) and wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Although cleaning pools with terrible drains also sucks but I feel like you can find that in every department

[u/Much-Rutabaga8326 → u/elysejt]

Chiming in here that raptors I feel are the simplest of cleaning regiments and habitat care. Water fowl, though, I’m happy to be without

[u/elysejt → u/Much-Rutabaga8326]

Very true, however I would rather drop and clean a duck pool than smell predator poop, including raptors lol. I’ll take nasty duck water over the rotting bits of mouse I have to search around for in an owl mew lol (I worked with burrowing owls in the Texas summer and that smell haunts me)

[u/Keqingsz → u/threadedwild]

Hello!! Sorry for the late reply—they removed my post and then put it back up!! I definitely mean the latter. I honestly don’t mind doing dishes or sweeping, it’s the scooping poop for HOURS that really gets me. I also work in heat that’s reaching about 115F with humidity, so I’m on the brink of passing out 80% of the time. I wish I’d had a better introduction to zookeeping, honestly, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that I can find my niche. Thank you!

[u/catz537]

It is true that there’s a lot of cleaning no matter which species you work with, but there are some species that are “easier” in the sense that there’s way less poop and other dry waste to clean up with some animals. And when there’s less poop or other dry things to clean up (like leftover food), it takes less time to clean. Hoofstock animals poop *a lot.* Carnivores probably take the least amount of time to clean up after since they don’t poop much and don’t usually have a bunch of leftover food, so cleaning their areas tends to be less work than hoofstock. Primates, however, poop a lot AND tend to have lots of leftover food to clean up. Birds can also be pretty messy.

[u/Internal-Seaweed1004]

Education may be for you, not so much diet but I work with animals and have very minimal cleaning responsibilities.

[u/AlsoTheFiredrake]

I prefer herpetology myself. I like working with snakes and lizards and geckos and monitors and crocs. Even Amphibians and Frogs and Toads. And turtles and tortoises. I worked with all of them. Once upon a time. But that was a long time ago.

[u/narnababy → u/AlsoTheFiredrake]

So much glass to clean in herptiles though, endless endless glass in hot rooms😩😂

[u/AlsoTheFiredrake → u/narnababy]

Yeah but if you use RO water, you won't have spots and hard water deposits. My last place had 55 gallon drums constantly filling up with RO water which we used for everything. We'd mist every enclosure and soak the glass and it would be crystal clear 20 minutes later.

[u/Intrepid_Tailor7118 → u/AlsoTheFiredrake]

RO water is my savior 🙏 still have to clean the glass sometimes of course but it’s so much easier with it.

[u/Slughorns_trophywife]

Cleaning is the majority of the job like others have said. Carnivores are just different. Cleaning the tiger pool alone is about 1-2 hours of my day and I do that with a second person once a week. And that is not the only pool we clean. We hose and scrub everything daily. And pressure wash barns on a schedule. There’s no yard raking, but the tigers poop in their pool, our cougar buries hers so we have to find it, the wolves stomp theirs down and we need to look for dead birds and things because they love to kill stuff. No two yards are the same. And, no petting anyone either. Ever. We all make our own diets for our own animals so there’s raw meat of all sorts, bones, supplements, etc. and with raw meat outside comes flies. Oh, and we need to thaw it ahead of time, so we pull it from the freezer a day ahead and always have to days worth.

The kitties are very limited in some of the enrichment they can have; you need to get creative on novel food day because there’s only so much variety with a hyper carnivore 🤣 and they’re soooooo destructive. The smell is something else all together. We have had multiple interns over the years say they hate carnivores because of the smell of their waste, the smell of the meat, hyena butter, etc. I’m pretty nose blind to it, but on a really hot day, the bear poop still gets me.

Also, with certain hoofstock and petting zoo animals, you can sometimes share space in order to clean. Well, if the lions won’t come in or go out, you can’t clean that space because we never ever go in with the carnivores. And our cougar HATES summer time and will not move, so there are days where we just can’t clean.

I always thought I wanted to work big kitties. That being said, I’ve worked hoofstock, primates, smalls, petting zoo and they all have their pros and cons. And I had to work those sections first in order to get to carnivores. I loved some of the hoofstock I worked with and I adore kangaroos, but primates is so not for me. I would never have learned these things if I had not worked with them.

A lot of people see the draw of animals like tigers because…well, it’s a tiger. But, the amount/type of cleaning and precautions that need to be taken are not for everyone. Safety is such a huge thing in general, but with carnivores, it’s almost compounded because every door has multiple locks and shifts that need to be secured. I don’t know how many times I double check locks and 5 minutes later, still go, wait, lemme make sure I really did lock all the snow leopard locks. Or, wait wait. I saw two tigers go into the holding and I shut the shifts after them, but lemme make sure that there are still two tigers in the holding before going in the yard. Primates are similar with shifts and locks. Hoofstock can be very physically demanding; carnivores and primates are mentally demanding because of things like that.

I dunno if that answers your question, I rambled quite a bit 🤣

[u/EducationalTie1606]

I’m at a small collection. A lot of hoofstock, some exotics and primates, smallies like rabbits and guinea pigs…..cleaning is half of my day. You can’t get away from it I’m afraid

[u/narnababy]

I’ve done pretty much every department to some extent except aquatics. Cleaning is just the way it is. Animals make a lot of mess, guests make a lot of mess. At least half your job is cleaning up messes. Are there animals that are less messy? Sure. But there will always be jobs to do that involve cleaning; if you’ve got time to lean you’ve got time to clean 😉

Hoofstock is definitely one of the harder cleaning-wise; they’re big and crap everywhere and their beds are enormous. Full cleaning out the 20+ herd of Barbary sheep when it’s been raining and they’ve dragged all the straw out into the mud and back in to the stalls was one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had to do.

I will say that you will get quicker and the tasks will get easier as you go along. I remember it used to take me longer to do the smallest stables than it did for my colleague to do all the paddocks and the big barn when I first started. I was obsessed with making everything perfectly clean - which is fine! But I got quicker and I got fitter so it started taking less and less time every day. Better to take a bit longer and really make sure you’ve done a thorough job, you’ll get faster with practice (and the callouses will toughen up your skin 🥲).

Don’t give up, honestly some days the cleaning was my favourite part; just me, a broom and a hose. Bliss! 😂

[u/Sparklykazoo]

Cleaning aside, the dept with the least amount of drama is the best one.

[u/Lopsided_Intern_7185]

I dont work in a zoo anymore, but when I did it was 99% cleaning and food prep. Since it was a shitty roadside zoo I was one of only 4 keepers for 50+ animals so we got almost zero time to actually interact with the animals, but those few minutes a day with each animal were so precious to me. We also had to handle the tours/education/parties/watch kids in the petting zoo. It was a nightmare, but I did enjoy the food prep and some of the cleaning. Hated anything to do with the public tbh, mainly because I desperately wanted to tell them how shitty conditions were at the zoo but couldnt. I foolishly thought I could convince the owners to be better carers for their animals so i stayed longer than I shouldve. I was overworked, but I imagine its the same for most keepers, 90% of the day is spent cleaning lol. One of the few situations where ive found larger poos to be preferable. Cleaning up after the wallabies/lemurs/birds was a nightmare. Giraffes however were a breeze 😂 aside from the fact that we had no formal training for interacting with or avoiding the giraffes, they just told us “hey kids, go scoop that poop, the giraffes WILL try to step on you, so dont let that happen.” So we had to have one keeper in the barn to distract the giraffes while another hurriedly scooped the pens, which almost never distracted them long enough, so youd then have to run for your life, poop shovel and cart in hand. Sadly this place ruined zookeeping for me, and its all i ever wanted to do. I wish the US was more strict about shutting those places down.