So what is a typical day as a Zoo hospital keeper really like? Well, for one thing, there are no typical days. There are things we have to do daily, but how they are done tends to vary. Here’s how the Zoo’s hospital keepers spend a typical day:

We start at 6:30 a.m. every day. The first thing we do is check each of the animals that are at the hospital. We discuss how they are doing, what happened to them the day before, and check how they ate overnight. Once all the animals have been checked, we read the list of cases that are scheduled for the day and prepare for them as needed. After this is done, the hospital animals are divided among the hospital keepers and we begin our cleaning and feeding duties.

As the vet techs begin treating the hospital patients, the hospital keepers may be called on to help hold, move, or catch the animals. While we are helping the techs, we are going back and forth cleaning and feeding. So we learn to multi-task.

At 8:30 a.m. we go to rounds. The hospital staff, including vets, techs, pathologists, and keepers, get together in the library to discuss all the medical cases at the hospital and the Zoo. Here it is determined which vets will work on which cases, what will be done to each of them, and in what order. The hospital keepers inform everyone how animals did overnight, if they noticed any changes from the day before, and figure out how they will best be able to help the doctors for the day.

Around 9 a.m. procedures begin. Grounds patients (those animals from Zoo grounds) begin arriving at the hospital, and, depending on who and what they are, hospital keepers assist by getting the animals ready for their procedure. This entails grabbing, netting, squeezing up, or transferring the patient so that it can be worked on or anesthetized. All this while still going back to our cleaning and feeding duties with the hospital animals!

The type of patients that come to the hospital varies every day. Every animal in the collection must get a physical and vaccinations at some point. There are also those patients who may be injured, others who are old and need some extra attention, and some who just don’t seem to be their normal selves. So there is a wide variety of who the patients are and why they are at the hospital. The number of cases for the day and how many patients are at the hospital determines how busy a hospital keeper’s day will be.

Regardless of what is going on for the day, the hospital keepers need to be aware of what is happening to the animals in their charge at the hospital. That is why they are checked several times throughout the day. And at the end of the day, once again the keepers walk around together to see how their in-patients are doing, discuss what happened to them that day, and share if there is anything scheduled for them the next day.

So, there are no typical days for a hospital keeper, but there are sure many interesting ones.

Yvette M. Kemp is a senior hospital keeper at the San Diego Zoo.
Read Yvette’s previous blog, Time at the Zoo’s Hospital.

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