Nutrition has a major impact on the health and welfare of animals in human care. This course will take you through from the basics of great ape nutrition to formulating and managing diets, with lots of resources and practical suggestions.
We will start with the basics of nutrition, what great apes eat in the wild, how nutrition impacts on health in different life stages. We will also learn about the major macro- and micronutrients in great ape diets.
The second section will provide a practical overview of the traditional main great ape diet components: fruits, vegetables, dry feeds and browse. We will also discuss potential issues with some of these.
The third section is all about creating a diet, whether new from scratch or changing an already existing one, including going fruit free with great apes. Real life examples will be provided to help the learning as it can be hard to translate theory into practice at first.
We will then move on to the day to day management of great ape nutrition, and will discuss challenges with diet preparation and presentation, how we can monitor the impact of diets on the animals’ weight, body condition and faecal output, as well as talking about dietary drift and commissary operations.
Our final section sums up the course.
Features
- Video presentations
- Links to further readings and resources
- Downloadable extra content
- 180 days access
Target audiences
- Great ape keepers
- Curators
- Sanctuary staff
- Students
- Veterinarians