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MLA Full: | "Keeping The Animals Safe In Freezing Temperatures!" YouTube, uploaded by Animal Wonders Montana, 25 February 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbHRRy8SyeY. |
MLA Inline: | (Animal Wonders Montana, 2021) |
APA Full: | Animal Wonders Montana. (2021, February 25). Keeping The Animals Safe In Freezing Temperatures! [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=mbHRRy8SyeY |
APA Inline: | (Animal Wonders Montana, 2021) |
Chicago Full: |
Animal Wonders Montana, "Keeping The Animals Safe In Freezing Temperatures!", February 25, 2021, YouTube, 10:10, https://youtube.com/watch?v=mbHRRy8SyeY. |
What happens when the weather gets so cold it’s life threatening? Jessi shows you how the Animal Wonders team keeps the animals safe.
Thank you to Oklahoma City Zoo and Cameron Park Zoo for providing photos for this video!
OKC Zoo: https://www.okczoo.org
Cameron Park Zoo: https://www.cameronparkzoo.com
Our Video Sponsors:
Lucka Kelbl
Ryan James
Riley Oosting
Christina Thompson
Eileen Stone
Francis Peterson
Tori Zecchini
John Brimley
Rob Nielsen
Alex
Andy
Teresa Whitlock
Scott Hartranft
Marissa Holman
Bitoku
Marisa Aldridge
GR Kulikowsky
Daniel Fowler
Kevin
Rangersyl
Daniel Lumley
Bianca T
Kerstin Soderquist
Jer
Scott Tengesdal
Paul Ferrari
Wes
Ragnhild
Xin Ye
Brandon Metheny
Thank you so much for helping make these videos possible!
If you'd like your name here or featured at the end of an episode, you can become a sponsor at www.patreon.com/animalwonders
#porcupine #raccoon #beaver
--
Looking for more awesome animal stuff?
Subscribe to Animal Wonders Montana to see all of our videos!
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Anmlwndrs
Other places to find us:
Website: http://www.animalwonders.org
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/animalwonders
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animalwondersmontana/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/animalwonders
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Animal_Wonders
Amazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/CODQMBOVLCE4?pldnSite=1
Photos from https://www.istockphoto.com/
Stock footage from https://www.storyblocks.com/
Image Sources:
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/aerial-texas-austin-september-2016-4k-hf4wlnufeizbpe0yu
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/aerial-oklahoma-oklahoma-city-vqagsoq
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/snowstorm-or-blizzard-buffets-frozen-tree-branch-dangerous-icy-roads-sl4quow0sk4b4hd56
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/intersection-traffic-lights-sway-during-a-snow-storm-in-winter-small-town-view-slw_sww0sk4b2jogg
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/forest-in-snow-storm-eciq7n9
Thank you to Oklahoma City Zoo and Cameron Park Zoo for providing photos for this video!
OKC Zoo: https://www.okczoo.org
Cameron Park Zoo: https://www.cameronparkzoo.com
Our Video Sponsors:
Lucka Kelbl
Ryan James
Riley Oosting
Christina Thompson
Eileen Stone
Francis Peterson
Tori Zecchini
John Brimley
Rob Nielsen
Alex
Andy
Teresa Whitlock
Scott Hartranft
Marissa Holman
Bitoku
Marisa Aldridge
GR Kulikowsky
Daniel Fowler
Kevin
Rangersyl
Daniel Lumley
Bianca T
Kerstin Soderquist
Jer
Scott Tengesdal
Paul Ferrari
Wes
Ragnhild
Xin Ye
Brandon Metheny
Thank you so much for helping make these videos possible!
If you'd like your name here or featured at the end of an episode, you can become a sponsor at www.patreon.com/animalwonders
#porcupine #raccoon #beaver
--
Looking for more awesome animal stuff?
Subscribe to Animal Wonders Montana to see all of our videos!
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Anmlwndrs
Other places to find us:
Website: http://www.animalwonders.org
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/animalwonders
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animalwondersmontana/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/animalwonders
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Animal_Wonders
Amazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/CODQMBOVLCE4?pldnSite=1
Photos from https://www.istockphoto.com/
Stock footage from https://www.storyblocks.com/
Image Sources:
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/aerial-texas-austin-september-2016-4k-hf4wlnufeizbpe0yu
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/aerial-oklahoma-oklahoma-city-vqagsoq
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/snowstorm-or-blizzard-buffets-frozen-tree-branch-dangerous-icy-roads-sl4quow0sk4b4hd56
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/intersection-traffic-lights-sway-during-a-snow-storm-in-winter-small-town-view-slw_sww0sk4b2jogg
https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/forest-in-snow-storm-eciq7n9
Hi, everyone!
Welcome back to Animal Wonders. I’m Jessi, and this Kizmit the African crested porcupine.
Kizmit has had quite an interesting week, and so have many animals and zookeepers across the United States. We had an extreme cold front come through that put the lives of some of our animals at risk. So what happens when the weather gets so cold it’s life threatening? How do we keep the animals safe? Let me show you what we did. [CHEERY INTRO MUSIC] . For many of the states, like Texas and Oklahoma, who rarely have to deal with freezing temperatures, the unusual extreme cold, major storms, and power outages has been a very serious undertaking.
The zookeepers were faced with major challenges trying to keep their animals warm. They got creative and saved the lives of thousands of animals. So well done to all the hard working animal keepers who are so dedicated to the wellbeing of their charges! Unfortunately, extreme weather can be a really challenging issue, and not all of the animals survived, which is why we take it so seriously.
Now, in Montana, unpredictable and extreme weather happens quite frequently. Sub zero temperatures, blizzards, and power outages are so common that it’s one of the biggest challenges to having an exotic animal rescue in Montana. Especially when providing care for species that come from desert or tropical habitats.
Which is why we have seasonal changes to our daily animal tasks and cold weather protocols ready to implement as needed. We’ve actually been having a really mild winter so far, with temperatures staying between 15 and 40 degrees F and just a small scattering of snow covering the ground in many places. This isn’t normal for a Montana winter, but it has been nice since we have a few new enclosures and new animals who are sensitive to extreme cold. Because of this mild winter weather, we’ve been able to test out how the heating systems are working and where we need to make improvements. So, when we saw the alerts about a winter storm warning, we knew it was time to put our cold weather protocols into action! First, we needed to move all the animals that were most vulnerable into areas where our tried and true heating systems keep everyone safe and comfortable.
This includes animals like Kizmit the porcupine. Kizi is currently living in one of our new buildings, and it’s been great because she has plenty of space and it’s generally been staying warm enough for her over this winter. But when the temperature fell under -10 degrees F, this space dropped under 60 degrees F, and with even colder temperatures predicted, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving her in this room. So Kizmit was loaded into her crate and moved into the main building for temporary housing so we could safely ride out the storm. Now, Kizi is a giant rodent with giant rodent teeth, and she can easily and quickly chew right through a wall. Housing her in a temperature controlled indoor space is challenging! So she went into the only room in the main building that has walls that she can’t chew through. But that happens to be currently housing our trio of rabbits, which means the rabbits needed to move out. So they moved into Sydney the bettong’s habitat during the day while Sydney, who is nocturnal, slept in her cozy sleeping pouch inside her familiar travel crate. Then at night, we switched the rabbits into their travel crates to sleep overnight, and Sydney got the space for her nighttime activities.
It might sound complicated, but it works great as a temporary solution for a few days. So with Kizmit safely secured in a warm space, we moved on to her winter roommate, Sprite the guinea turaco. Sprite is fairly cold tolerant and is comfortable in temperatures down to about 40 degrees F. So, she just needed to be moved into a crate for the two nights that it was predicted to get below -20 degrees F. She doesn’t enjoy being in small spaces, so as soon as it was safe in the morning, she was let out of the crate back into the room to run and hop around on her branches.
Our next challenge was keeping Hara our Harris’s hawk from getting too cold, which could lead to frostbite on her feet or wings. Harris’s hawks are desert birds and don’t have adaptations to help them survive in freezing temperatures like many of our native hawk species we have in Montana. But Hara has been living at Animal Wonders since 2012, and with a few precautions, she’s now a pro at tolerating whatever weather comes at us. But that doesn’t mean we can completely leave her to it. Hara has two heated perches that she can choose to sit on whenever she wants. One is in the main space of her mews, and the other is inside a wooden den box with a ceramic heat emitter over top. She can sit under the heater whenever she wants, but that doesn’t mean that she’s completely safe. See, hawks don’t have good night vision, so once they’ve perched for the night, they won’t move from that spot for fear of crashing into branches that they can’t see in the dark. Which means if there’s a major temperature drop at night and she hasn’t chosen to perch in the heated area, she’s at risk of getting too cold.
So our protocol for her is when the temperature is predicted to get below -10 degrees F, we’ll go in and make sure she’s safe. If she isn’t already in her box, we move her onto the heated perch and close the doors of her heated box to wait out the cold. The only downside to this is that she ends up pooping all over the box, and since everything is frozen, cleanup sometimes has to wait until things thaw out enough to scrub. Thankfully, the really dangerous part of the cold snap was short, and Hara only needed to be moved into her heated box for two nights. And since she’s proven to be quite smart about keeping warm during the day, we opened up the door and she had access to her full space each morning.
And our last major challenge was for a new animal that recently came to live at Animal Wonders: Gwendolyn the turkey vulture. This is Gwen’s first winter in Montana, so she’s not as savvy as Hara about keeping herself warm. So even though she has heated areas in her home, we didn’t feel completely comfortable leaving her to her own devices. And since we don’t have a fully built indoor area for her, we moved her into the main building in the only available space large enough to keep her happy: right in the hallway. Which was a really interesting experience for both us and her.
It was really fun watching all of her unique behaviors, and we’re really getting to know her better. So that meant all of the cold sensitive animals were accounted for, but that still left a lot to do. We turned up the heaters in all the main indoor rooms and turned down the ventilation systems. Then we turned up the air purifiers to keep the animals’ natural dust and dander under control.
Next we gave all the native species living in outdoor spaces extra bedding, double checked their dens to make sure they were secure and the animals could make them cozy, and ensured their heated water bowls were properly secured and functioning. Lollipop the skunk is getting older, so she’s now getting a heat pad under part of her den box, so we made sure it was working and she was warm and happy. Ringo the raccoon got fresh blankets to pile into his house since he had recently pulled all of them into his water for who knows what reason! Raccoons are trouble makers. Also, Ringo’s daily dumping of his water dish has created a big berm of solid ice around his bowl that’s threatening to block the door. So we’ll need to figure out how to prevent that from happening in the future.
Then we installed a heat bulb over one of the ravens’ perches to give them the option to sit under it if they wanted to. And that left us with Huckleberry the beaver. Now, with Huckleberry comes even more challenges. His need for a large pool of fresh water every day combined with freezing temperatures creates a unique situation. And we’ve thought about this a lot, especially while we were planning the construction of his building and we put the pool in. So his home has an outdoor yard, but his pool is completely indoors, so we can keep it and the filter pipes from freezing solid by using just a small wall heater. Now most of the time, we can keep the indoor space just above freezing with the windows open to allow for nice air flow.
So during the cold snap, Huckleberry was completely unfazed by the cold and carried on doing his beaver business. And since we weren’t worried about him tolerating the cold, we made one little mistake. We didn’t close the windows, and the water ended up freezing in his pipes. Luckily, the pipes didn’t break, but it did make it very hard to clean out his pool for a few days. Of course, we’d do anything for Huckleberry, but I’ve got to give a huge shout out to Taylor and Augusto for taking on cleaning beaver poop water in sub zero weather! It’s no easy task. When extreme weather comes unexpectedly, it can be devastating.
I want to send out my deepest condolences to all of the animal caretakers who are grieving a loss due to the cold or the power outages. I’m incredibly thankful to have a great animal keeper team and solid plans in place, even if everything isn’t completely perfect. Overall this cold blast was challenging, but it wasn’t more than we could handle. It came with some known tasks and it presented some new hurdles, but we’ve made it through and we’ve come out with good ideas for what needs to be worked on! We’re going to figure out how to keep Kizmit the porcupine’s room warmer even in extreme cold temperatures. We’re going to build Gwendolyn the vulture an indoor space that she can go into when she’s cold.
We’re going to figure out how to keep Ringo the raccoon from creating ice sculptures in the front of his door. And we’re going to not forget to close Huckleberry the beaver’s windows when it gets 20°F below. We won’t be able to make any real progress on some of these things until spring comes, but I’m looking forward to tackling those improvements so we’re even more prepared for next winter. Thanks for going on this journey with us! Every day is an adventure at Animal Wonders. And if you’d like to continue going on adventures, please be sure to subscribe and I’ll see you soon! Bye! [BOLD OUTRO MUSIC].
Welcome back to Animal Wonders. I’m Jessi, and this Kizmit the African crested porcupine.
Kizmit has had quite an interesting week, and so have many animals and zookeepers across the United States. We had an extreme cold front come through that put the lives of some of our animals at risk. So what happens when the weather gets so cold it’s life threatening? How do we keep the animals safe? Let me show you what we did. [CHEERY INTRO MUSIC] . For many of the states, like Texas and Oklahoma, who rarely have to deal with freezing temperatures, the unusual extreme cold, major storms, and power outages has been a very serious undertaking.
The zookeepers were faced with major challenges trying to keep their animals warm. They got creative and saved the lives of thousands of animals. So well done to all the hard working animal keepers who are so dedicated to the wellbeing of their charges! Unfortunately, extreme weather can be a really challenging issue, and not all of the animals survived, which is why we take it so seriously.
Now, in Montana, unpredictable and extreme weather happens quite frequently. Sub zero temperatures, blizzards, and power outages are so common that it’s one of the biggest challenges to having an exotic animal rescue in Montana. Especially when providing care for species that come from desert or tropical habitats.
Which is why we have seasonal changes to our daily animal tasks and cold weather protocols ready to implement as needed. We’ve actually been having a really mild winter so far, with temperatures staying between 15 and 40 degrees F and just a small scattering of snow covering the ground in many places. This isn’t normal for a Montana winter, but it has been nice since we have a few new enclosures and new animals who are sensitive to extreme cold. Because of this mild winter weather, we’ve been able to test out how the heating systems are working and where we need to make improvements. So, when we saw the alerts about a winter storm warning, we knew it was time to put our cold weather protocols into action! First, we needed to move all the animals that were most vulnerable into areas where our tried and true heating systems keep everyone safe and comfortable.
This includes animals like Kizmit the porcupine. Kizi is currently living in one of our new buildings, and it’s been great because she has plenty of space and it’s generally been staying warm enough for her over this winter. But when the temperature fell under -10 degrees F, this space dropped under 60 degrees F, and with even colder temperatures predicted, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving her in this room. So Kizmit was loaded into her crate and moved into the main building for temporary housing so we could safely ride out the storm. Now, Kizi is a giant rodent with giant rodent teeth, and she can easily and quickly chew right through a wall. Housing her in a temperature controlled indoor space is challenging! So she went into the only room in the main building that has walls that she can’t chew through. But that happens to be currently housing our trio of rabbits, which means the rabbits needed to move out. So they moved into Sydney the bettong’s habitat during the day while Sydney, who is nocturnal, slept in her cozy sleeping pouch inside her familiar travel crate. Then at night, we switched the rabbits into their travel crates to sleep overnight, and Sydney got the space for her nighttime activities.
It might sound complicated, but it works great as a temporary solution for a few days. So with Kizmit safely secured in a warm space, we moved on to her winter roommate, Sprite the guinea turaco. Sprite is fairly cold tolerant and is comfortable in temperatures down to about 40 degrees F. So, she just needed to be moved into a crate for the two nights that it was predicted to get below -20 degrees F. She doesn’t enjoy being in small spaces, so as soon as it was safe in the morning, she was let out of the crate back into the room to run and hop around on her branches.
Our next challenge was keeping Hara our Harris’s hawk from getting too cold, which could lead to frostbite on her feet or wings. Harris’s hawks are desert birds and don’t have adaptations to help them survive in freezing temperatures like many of our native hawk species we have in Montana. But Hara has been living at Animal Wonders since 2012, and with a few precautions, she’s now a pro at tolerating whatever weather comes at us. But that doesn’t mean we can completely leave her to it. Hara has two heated perches that she can choose to sit on whenever she wants. One is in the main space of her mews, and the other is inside a wooden den box with a ceramic heat emitter over top. She can sit under the heater whenever she wants, but that doesn’t mean that she’s completely safe. See, hawks don’t have good night vision, so once they’ve perched for the night, they won’t move from that spot for fear of crashing into branches that they can’t see in the dark. Which means if there’s a major temperature drop at night and she hasn’t chosen to perch in the heated area, she’s at risk of getting too cold.
So our protocol for her is when the temperature is predicted to get below -10 degrees F, we’ll go in and make sure she’s safe. If she isn’t already in her box, we move her onto the heated perch and close the doors of her heated box to wait out the cold. The only downside to this is that she ends up pooping all over the box, and since everything is frozen, cleanup sometimes has to wait until things thaw out enough to scrub. Thankfully, the really dangerous part of the cold snap was short, and Hara only needed to be moved into her heated box for two nights. And since she’s proven to be quite smart about keeping warm during the day, we opened up the door and she had access to her full space each morning.
And our last major challenge was for a new animal that recently came to live at Animal Wonders: Gwendolyn the turkey vulture. This is Gwen’s first winter in Montana, so she’s not as savvy as Hara about keeping herself warm. So even though she has heated areas in her home, we didn’t feel completely comfortable leaving her to her own devices. And since we don’t have a fully built indoor area for her, we moved her into the main building in the only available space large enough to keep her happy: right in the hallway. Which was a really interesting experience for both us and her.
It was really fun watching all of her unique behaviors, and we’re really getting to know her better. So that meant all of the cold sensitive animals were accounted for, but that still left a lot to do. We turned up the heaters in all the main indoor rooms and turned down the ventilation systems. Then we turned up the air purifiers to keep the animals’ natural dust and dander under control.
Next we gave all the native species living in outdoor spaces extra bedding, double checked their dens to make sure they were secure and the animals could make them cozy, and ensured their heated water bowls were properly secured and functioning. Lollipop the skunk is getting older, so she’s now getting a heat pad under part of her den box, so we made sure it was working and she was warm and happy. Ringo the raccoon got fresh blankets to pile into his house since he had recently pulled all of them into his water for who knows what reason! Raccoons are trouble makers. Also, Ringo’s daily dumping of his water dish has created a big berm of solid ice around his bowl that’s threatening to block the door. So we’ll need to figure out how to prevent that from happening in the future.
Then we installed a heat bulb over one of the ravens’ perches to give them the option to sit under it if they wanted to. And that left us with Huckleberry the beaver. Now, with Huckleberry comes even more challenges. His need for a large pool of fresh water every day combined with freezing temperatures creates a unique situation. And we’ve thought about this a lot, especially while we were planning the construction of his building and we put the pool in. So his home has an outdoor yard, but his pool is completely indoors, so we can keep it and the filter pipes from freezing solid by using just a small wall heater. Now most of the time, we can keep the indoor space just above freezing with the windows open to allow for nice air flow.
So during the cold snap, Huckleberry was completely unfazed by the cold and carried on doing his beaver business. And since we weren’t worried about him tolerating the cold, we made one little mistake. We didn’t close the windows, and the water ended up freezing in his pipes. Luckily, the pipes didn’t break, but it did make it very hard to clean out his pool for a few days. Of course, we’d do anything for Huckleberry, but I’ve got to give a huge shout out to Taylor and Augusto for taking on cleaning beaver poop water in sub zero weather! It’s no easy task. When extreme weather comes unexpectedly, it can be devastating.
I want to send out my deepest condolences to all of the animal caretakers who are grieving a loss due to the cold or the power outages. I’m incredibly thankful to have a great animal keeper team and solid plans in place, even if everything isn’t completely perfect. Overall this cold blast was challenging, but it wasn’t more than we could handle. It came with some known tasks and it presented some new hurdles, but we’ve made it through and we’ve come out with good ideas for what needs to be worked on! We’re going to figure out how to keep Kizmit the porcupine’s room warmer even in extreme cold temperatures. We’re going to build Gwendolyn the vulture an indoor space that she can go into when she’s cold.
We’re going to figure out how to keep Ringo the raccoon from creating ice sculptures in the front of his door. And we’re going to not forget to close Huckleberry the beaver’s windows when it gets 20°F below. We won’t be able to make any real progress on some of these things until spring comes, but I’m looking forward to tackling those improvements so we’re even more prepared for next winter. Thanks for going on this journey with us! Every day is an adventure at Animal Wonders. And if you’d like to continue going on adventures, please be sure to subscribe and I’ll see you soon! Bye! [BOLD OUTRO MUSIC].