Enrichment, What is it?
In addition to the daily husbandry of our resident ambassador animals, we also provide training and enrichment. The goal of enrichment is to provide mental (and sometimes physically involved) stimulation while encouraging species specific behaviors. With our program, just like in all other managed care settings, we provide enrichment to our animals. We have an enrichment calendar where we have a rotation of different types and categories of enrichment that volunteers use to guide their enrichment activities. Every facility will have their own enrichment protocols/calendars to fit the needs of their animals. Collaboration often occurs between centers and other programs and this is a good resource for us to find new ideas for enrichment for our animals. Enrichment can make a big impact on the lives of our animals, and we strive to make it as new, exciting, and interactive as possible. Enrichment will vary depending on the species of the animal, their involvement in past enrichment activities, their comfort with volunteers and other interactions, and the ambassador’s own personalities.
Favorite Enrichment
Not only do we account for species specific natural behaviors, but we look at the individual personality of each animal in our care to determine appropriate enrichment for them. Over the years, we have kept track of what enrichment was favorable and what enrichment was not, allowing us to personalize their enrichment to ensure they are benefiting from what we are adding to their environment. Petunia, our Virginia opossum, loves food puzzles, foraging, new scents, and exploring. Ruby, one of our red-tailed hawks, loves to shred things and this encourages her species-specific behaviors. Hazel, our eastern box turtle, along with Onslo our blue-tongued skink, have been working on their obstacle course skills and have been maneuvering them well. River and Vara prefer more auditory enrichment over physical enrichment items. Odin, our other red-tailed hawk, enjoys a wide variety of enrichment from seasonal decorations to foraging to music. Maize and Caduceus, our snakes, explore and climb to new places. Clover, our American Kestrel, is extremely inquisitive and loves finding new items and decorations in her enclosure. While I’ve listed each ambassadors most interacted with type of enrichment, they all get a rotating variety of enrichment. This ensures that we are not just giving one type of enrichment so they are getting variety in their daily life as they would experience in the wild.
Training
Training can also be enriching to our animals and we do train on glove with some of our raptor residents, while others have different kinds of training, such as target, crate, and scale training. For our training, we only use positive reinforcement techniques. We train for behaviors to help with educational program use or for husbandry and medical procedures which helps to decrease stress.
Training is very complex and has many facets, it can also be very rewarding and enriching for the animals. For example, Ruby and Odin enjoy walks outside because they are glove trained. Sydney, along with some of our volunteers, are able to train with them throughout the week to ensure they remain comfortable and solid with the behaviors they are trained on and work to train new behaviors as needed. With the new addition of Sarah Spang to our team, a falconer, we have been able to add new techniques to our training with the raptors, particularly Ruby. We have seen that Ruby very much enjoys the extra training and has greatly benefited from it.
Enrichment, Rewarding for all!
Enrichment is my favorite part about working in a managed care setting, I love letting my creativity lead the way. Whether I am thinking of new ways to make food puzzles, working on paper mache for the animals, finding new configurations and decorations in the enclosure, it is a wonderful creative outlet. It is also very rewarding seeing how the animals interact with the enrichment I created, especially when it brings out a targeted species-specific behavior and was mentally stimulating for the animal. We are always evaluating and adjusting the enrichment that is given to our resident animals to try to maximize the benefits of enrichment. So, next time you visit us or a different managed care setting, see if you can figure out what enrichment is being utilized!
Written By: Roxanne, Wildlife Ambassador Care Coordinator and Class of 2027
