creaturefeature
All in a day's work
A Day in the Life of…
Arthur Ferguson, Australian Bushwalk Keeper
Arthur Ferguson, Perth Zoo’s Senior Keeper in the Australian
Bushwalk, has worked with Australian animals for over ten
years. For nearly nine of those years he has worked at Perth
Zoo with its diverse collection of Australian fauna—first as a
bird keeper, then gaining experience in other areas of the
section, after which he decided to focus on Australian
mammals.
"The echidnas are among my favourites," Arthur said.
"They’re the only monotreme found in Western Australia and
very little is known about them."
"To date, only one of our females, Blue, has produced eggs in
the last few years. Unfortunately, they’ve not hatched so this
year we are looking at ‘candling’ them (holding eggs up to a
light to see if there is movement inside the egg) to see if they
are fertile. We’re not sure why the other two females have
never produced eggs."
Arthur Ferguson, Australian Bushwalk Keeper
Arthur’s work with echidnas isn’t just limited to those at Perth
Zoo. He also liaises regularly with Dr Peggy Rismuller, the
leading echidna researcher in Australia, who is working on
Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Information gained from
7am
There’s a lot of work to do in the Bushwalk before Zoo visitors
come in at 9am. We collect the food we’ve prepared the day
before from the Mammal Feed Shed and take it up to the
Bushwalk. There are two feeds per day depending upon the
habits of the species— the wombats, kangaroos and other
macropods get fed in the morning and the dingoes, koalas,
Tasmanian devil and echidnas are fed in the afternoon.
All enclosures are cleaned and raked, uneaten food is removed
and the bowls cleaned and water troughs are refilled. We
visually check all the animals to make sure they’re healthy. We
have four echidnas, one male and three females, and they are
easy to distinguish from each other because each has a
coloured mark on one of their spines. Amber is the male; Blue
is the female that has produced eggs; and Red and Green are
the other two females.
Late morning, we prepare the food for the animals that are fed
in the afternoon. This feed starts at around 2.30pm and takes
about an hour, finishing with the koala talk and feed. We make
a kind of porridge for the echidnas with cat food, chopped
termites, vitamin supplements and a high fibre pellet which
replaces the sand they would normally ingest. We give the
echidnas termites as often as we can get them, especially at
breeding time in August.
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newspaws |
Winter 2005
echidnas in the wild will be applied to those in the Zoo in an
attempt to create as suitable an environment as possible for
breeding.
Between lunch and 2.30pm we do whatever work needs to be
done in the Bushwalk—repairs to enclosures, replacing exhibit
furniture, that sort of thing—as well as moving animals between
exhibits, to and from the vet hospital, collect samples and so on.
Every couple of weeks we clean out the three burrows at the
front of the echidna exhibit. We remove and replace the
substrate (the earth and bedding). The echidnas seem to
enjoy the new substrate as they nose around in it, investigating
the fresh earth. We clean the echidna pond regularly. Although
we’ve never seen them in the pond, there is evidence that they
get in as we have to remove sand and other dirt from it.
We weigh all the echidnas on a regular basis. This is not easy
as the spines are very sharp, so we have to wear very heavy,
thick gloves. The animals weigh between 4kg and 5.5kg.
There’s very little difference in weight between the male and the
females. In fact, other than at breeding time in August, it’s
difficult to sex an echidna. The males have a fold of skin on
their bellies that looks like a pouch.
After the koala feed, I do paperwork until my day ends at 4pm.
Paperwork includes animal reports that must be completed
every day, as well as catching up on emails and enquiries,
animal transfers and so on.