AZA Application –
Using ZIMS
ZIMS can help ISIS Members to
complete their
AZA Accreditation Application
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How ZIMS Can Help
• Some of the accreditation questions can be
answered directly by printing information
from ZIMS in the form of reports or exports.
• For the majority of the questions, ZIMS helps
you easily gather information you will need to
answer the questions in the requested format
(narrative, provided form, etc.) for your AZA
accreditation application.
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Using This Presentation
• The various sections follow the flow in the AZA Application.
Specific questions are identified.
– EXAMPLE: AC-7a How many animals at your institution are
in on loan from other institutions?
• Breadcrumbs show you how to get to the ZIMS screens
– EXAMPLE: Start>Reports>Loan Report>Loan In
• Screen shots of the ZIMS Application show you what to look
for.
– EXAMPLE:
• The blue text boxes provide additional details
– EXAMPLE:
This report will display what animals you physically
have at your facility but do not also have legal
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ownership.
Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-3 Submit a copy of your Institutional Collection Plan (ICP)
– Enclosure icon>Enclosure Search>Details tab>Planned Taxa
Within the Enclosure module, every enclosure has a grid for
recording species planned for it. For this enclosure we are
planning to add black swans in 2014, parma wallabies in 2015
and red-necked wallabies in 2016.
We had also planned to include red kangaroos but found the
area to be inappropriate so we marked it Inactive with a note
as to why we changed our minds. This will help later on if
someone wants to add red kangaroos we can reference an
earlier decision. In the application you will need to justify
your decisions and the notes area is a good place to record
this information to reference when completing the
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application.
Animal Care, Welfare & Management
• AC-3 continued
– Enclosure>Search>Planned Taxa
To search for your Planned Taxa go to the Enclosure
module and Planned Taxa Search. You can filter by
specific Taxonomy and Target Year and Active Plans.
The results gird will display the enclosure (hyperlinked),
species (hyperlinked to taxonomy record), sex ratios,
year and if Active or not.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-7 Submit your institution’s most recent animal inventory in
taxonomic order, including scientific name and sex
– Start>Reports>Inventory Detail Report
The Inventory Report is one of the
most commonly used reports in ZIMS.
To answer this question you need to
select Inventory Detail Report as it will
include all animals you physically hold
and own, hold but do not own, and
own but do not hold.
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You can also export the report to
different formats. This report can be
submitted directly as produced
from ZIMS.
Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC 7 continued
Before you select to
Run Report you can
also chose to Export
For Raw Excel. This
will allow you to
further manipulate
the data.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-7a How many animals at your institution are in on loan
from other institutions?
• AC-7b How many animals at your institution are out on loan
to other institutions?
– Start>Reports>Inventory Report>Check desired boxes
Having animals in-on-loan or out-on-loan often indicates a willingness of the institution to
cooperate with other facilities. It is very easy to obtain that information by running an inventory
report for only those animals.
The totals are presented at the bottom.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-8b Are all your institution’s holdings of endangered,
CITES 1, SSP, and studbook species registered with ISIS?
– Start>Reports>Inventory Detail Report>select CITES
You can run a report for only those species
listed by CITES to help answer this
question. SSP species will be covered in a
later slide.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-10 Submit details on your institution’s animal marking
system utilized to correspond with animal records.
– Animals>Animal Record>Details>Images or Identifiers
ZIMS allows you to identify your
animals using many types of
identifiers. One popular feature
is the ability to add images to
the animal record. This is very
helpful for species that are
difficult to add tags or bands to
such as these poison dart frogs.
You can easily see which frog
record you are in. Images are
especially useful if keepers are
entering their own data as a
double check that they
are in the correct record.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC 10 continued
Images are also useful for larger animals.
This zebra has a distinctive stripe pattern
on its rump. There is also an Identifiers
Grid to track logical (intangible) identifiers
such as House Name and Studbook
Number and Physical identifiers such as
artificial tags, bands and transponders or
natural color patterns or abnormalities.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-14 Has someone been designated as being responsible for
your institution’s animal record-keeping system?
– Institution>My Institution>Staff>Search Form
ZIMS deploys with seven template Roles
that are kept updated as new functionality
becomes available. The Local Admin Role
has access to manage every aspect of ZIMS
and is usually the person designated as being
responsible for your institution’s animal
records. It is easy to search for anyone
assigned this Role.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-15 Are records current with up-to-date information?
•
An advantage to ZIMS is that as soon as the record is Saved it is instantly
viewable by others who have been given access to that information. There is
no waiting for data submission.
•
ZIMS is designed to allow multiple staff members to record information so you
are not waiting for a single person, such as the Registrar, to get all the data
entered.
– Keepers
• Notes and Observations
• Weights & Lengths
• Training Information
– Curators
• Planned Taxa
• Management Plans
– Veterinarians
• Medical Care
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-24 If your institution maintains elephants, submit a copy
of your elephant behavior profiles for the past 24-months
– Animal record>Note & Observation to record
– Start>Reports>Note Retrieval Report to retrieve
Tracking behaviors can be easily done using Notes and Observations. You can then search by all
Individual Behaviors, or even very specific ones, and create a report on what has been noted for each
animal. This makes retrieving behavior profiles over a time period very easy. The left shows the
recording screen.
The right shows the search screen with the various filters.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-28 Do any animals in your institution spend time in a
“touch pool” or “petting” environment?
– Enclosure module>Tree View or Add New
By setting up your Enclosure Tree
to incorporate these types of enclosure
environments you can easily track
animals that may spend time in them.
This institution has a Children’s Zoo
(a petting environment) and a touch tank.
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Animal Care, Welfare & Management
• AC 28 continued
– Enclosure record>Occupants tab
Within each enclosure, selecting the
Occupants tab will display what animals
are currently being held in the enclosure.
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Animal Care, Welfare & Management
• AC 28 continued
If you want to search for animals
previously occupying the enclosure
you can use the search form and
record a date range, or select to
Show Historical Records. If the
animal has been removed from the
enclosure, in addition to the Date
Moved In a Date Moved Out column
will be displayed.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
•
AC-30 Does your institution use program animals (animals that are used outside
their normal exhibit or holding areas or are intended to have regular, physical
contact with the public within their normal exhibits, e.g., contact area with
domestic animals, browse feeding program for giraffes, lorikeet feeding, etc.)?
– Animals module>Animal Simple Search
ZIMS allows you to put your animals into various
Collections. Collections identify the main reason for
having the animal at your facility. We have created a
Collection for our Program Animals and placed the
appropriate animals into this Collection.
We can search for what animals have been assigned
to a specific Collection.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-44 Submit a copy of your institution’s animal enrichment
and training program
– Animal record>More Details tab>Training Information
Although ZIMS does not provide an
area to record your overall
enrichment and training program,
it does help you track how you are
following this program. Enrichment
is one of the Training Purposes that
can be selected. Here we have
created a routine of Auditory
Variables and selected Enrichment
as the Training Purpose.
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Animal Care, Welfare & Management
• AC 44 continued
– Animal Search>Training Definitions Search
You can search for the various Trainings being given using Animal Training Definition Search.
Here we searched for who is getting the Auditory Variables enrichment.
We find four animals receiving this enrichment.
The numbers are hyperlinked to display a grid of the actual animals involved. And you can go
directly into their record from the Animal ID hyperlink.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-46. If your institution is an aquarium or has significant aquarium
facilities, submit a detailed description of the water quality monitoring
program that outlines parameters tested, allowable tolerances, frequency
of testing, methods of testing, and data interpretation protocol for each
major aquatic system
– Start>Tools>Measurement Range Template
Simply taking water quality measurements is not enough
to keep your aquatic animals healthy. These measurements
need to be within certain minimum and maximum ranges.
You can create a Measurement Range Template where you
record the desired measurement range. We want our aluminum
measurements to be no lower than 0.07 and no higher than
.32.
We have assigned this range to both Tank Three and
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Tank Four.
Animal Care, Welfare & Management
• AC-46 continued
– Enclosure record>Details tab>Water Quality Measurements
If a measurement is recorded that
is outside this desired range you are
given a message that notes what the
minimum and maximum measurement
is. You can accept this if it is correct or
go back and correct it if you made a
mistake.
In the enclosure record the out of range
measurement is displayed in red.
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Animal Care, Welfare, & Management
• AC-49. In the last five years, have any animals being shipped to or from
your institution died or been seriously injured in transport?
– Start>Reports>Transaction Report>Advanced Filter
In the ZIMS Transaction report, using Advanced Filters, you can
select Death in Transit. A Death in Transit means the animal left
your facility, but for some reason not caused by you, it died before
reaching its destination. These deaths are not counted as a death
against your institution.
In reports the transaction will display as it was originally intended
(such as Donation To or Loan Out To below) followed by
(Death in Transit).
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Veterinary Care
•
•
•
•
VC-3 Are the specific controlled narcotic drugs Carfentanil, M99, or M50-50
utilized by your institution?
VC-4 Are other controlled substances utilized by your institution?
VC-7 Is chemical capture equipment kept on the premises?
VC-8 Is there a program for regular disposal (or removal and separate storage) of
outdated animal drugs?
– Medical>Pharmacy Inventory>Add New
The Medical module allows institutions
to record their drugs in an inventory
and track their usage and expiration
dates. Whenever a drug is recorded as
being used in an animal record, that
amount is automatically deducted from
the remaining amount. If the drug is
regulated there is a checkbox to
indicate that it is a controlled substance.
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Veterinary Care
• VC-3,VC-4,VC-7 and VC-8 continued
– Medical>Pharmacy Inventory>Search
You can search for your drugs using many different filters.
Of special importance is the ability to search for drugs
that may be approaching their expiration date. The search
results grid will provide important information at a glance
such as the Expiration Date, the Remaining amount and
the drug Status.
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Veterinary Care
• VC-5 Does your institution maintain complete medical records
on all animals in the institution?
With the deployment of ZIMS for
Medical in April of 2014 the complete
medical history can now be captured
along with the Animal Inventory and
Husbandry information that was
available in the initial release of ZIMS.
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Conservation
• C-4 List your institution’s involvement in all Species Survival
Plans (SSPs), Taxon Advisory Groups (TAGs), Science Advisory
Groups (SAGs), Conservation Action Partnerships (CAPs), Field
Conservation Committees (FCCs), and other cooperative
programs with similar institutions
– Animal record>More Details tab>Management Plan
Within each animal record there is a grid to record appropriate Management
Plans. This giant anteater had been managed under a PMP program. It then
became an SSP species. Finally it is determined to be surplus to the SSP.
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Conservation
• C-4 continued
– Animal record>More Details tab>Management Plan
Opening up the record allows you to view why the changes occurred. The PMP was
moved up to an SSP.
Later the animal was determined to be surplus to the SSP program due to its genetics,
specifically its Mean Kinship. Mean Kinship is an indicator of how related you are to the
rest of the population. A high Mean Kinship means that you have many relatives already
so you should not continue to breed.
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Conservation
• C-4 continued
– Animal module>Advanced Animal Search
Using the Advanced Animal
Search you can find all the animals
that have been recorded as being
in a Management Plan. This grid
can be exported to Excel or pdf
for further manipulation, printing
or emailing.
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Staff
• S-1 Submit a list of all staff members and their titles
– Institution>My Institution>Staff
You can record and track
your staff from the Staff
grid in My Institution.
Adding someone as a
Staff member does not
automatically give them
access to ZIMS. It does
mean that they can be
assigned to a Team or
Department, used as a
Responsible Party or
entered as an Observer.
If they are marked as a
Public Contact, their
information will be
visible to other institutions.
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Staff
• S-1 continued
– Institution>My Institution>Staff>Export icon
You can export this Staff grid to Excel or pdf where it can be manipulated
as desired, printed or emailed.
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Physical Facilities
• PF-4 Submit a description of your institution’s maintenance
program for exhibits, buildings, grounds, and equipment.
– Enclosure Record>Details>Maintenance>Add New
Every enclosure record has a
maintenance Grid where routine and
non-routine Maintenance can be
tracked. Here we are Recording some
pest control that has been performed
on an exhibit. The checkbox “Apply to
All Occupants” means that this
information will go into the record of
any animals that were occupying the
exhibit at that time. Especially for
pest control, this is important to have
in an animal record should any
medical issues occur after treatment.
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Physical Facilities
• PF-4 continued
– Enclosure module>Maintenance Search
You can search for Maintenance performed
using many filters.
In the grid below we have searched for all our
pest management and see that the Children’s
Zoo was treated twice and Exhibit 1 has had
one treatment. You can use the hyperlinks to
the Enclosure record to view additional details
recorded there.
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Physical Facilities
• PF-17 Is your institution equipped with emergency life
support systems for the animals?
– Life Support module>Add New or Search
The Life Support module allows for
creating life supports by attaching
components and then attaching the
Life Support to one or more
enclosures. On the left we have an
emergency life support that is
attached to two tanks. The Life
Support is comprised of a filter, an
air pump and a heater.
You can search for your Life
Supports by many filters as shown
on the right.
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Physical Facilities
• PF-18 If your institution is an aquarium or has significant
aquarium facilities, submit a detailed description of the
operation of the water circulation system, life support
systems, and water supply.
– Enclosure module>Add New or Search
As detailed in the previous slide,
you can record and track your Life
Supports in ZIMS. In addition, when
adding a new aquatic enclosure
there is a field for Water Type (ie
source of the water). This is a
searchable field, so you can find all
enclosures with a specific water
supply. The results grid can be
exported for printing or emailing.
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Safety/Security
• SS-21 Are all animal exhibits and holding areas sufficiently
secured to prevent unintentional animal egress?
– Enclosure module>More Details>Barriers or Dimensions
Another part of the enclosure
record is the ability to record
information about the
enclosures such as the barriers
and their dimensions. The top
is the barrier grid and we can
see that the front viewing is a
solid glass barrier, the back
wall is weldmesh, and there is
also a dry moat in the
viewing area.
The bottom grid displays the
dimensions. The front viewing
glass is 10 feet high by 20 feet
long. The moat is 25 feet wide.
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Safety/Security
• SS-21 continued
– Enclosure record>More Details>Barrier>View/Edit
You can also record details on
the barriers such as the strength
of the weldmesh or glass. This
can help when there are specific
enclosure requirements for
housing the species as it makes it
easy to check that you are meeting
these requirements.
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Preparing your AZA Accreditation Application
ZIMS CAN HELP!
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