A day in the life...

To give you a rough idea of what i've let myself in for I thought I'd break my "normal" day down. Every day is however...different. As cliche as that sounds it is very true for animal care, and life at WHF is no different.

"Ingenious" hiding place take 1

AM - 
Head to meat room to prepare feeds (a scary amount of flesh and blood)
Add numerous vitamins and supplements to meat
Put in wheelbarrow/back in fridge if for PM feeds
Prepare cleaning wheelbarrow: fresh straw etc
Head over to first cats of the day - usually one of the tigers or lions
Lock cats in - go poo and bone hunting (and remove)
Put meat in "ingenious hiding place" 
Add some extra enrichment - such as scents/boomer balls/boxes etc
Lock up and double check locks
Let cats out who discovered "ingeniously hidden meat" in 5seconds
Curse and try to think of more ingenious hiding place for next time
Lock cats out - clean beds by removing wet straw and wash/disinfect as needed
Check waters and change /clean
Lock everything
Move on to next cats until PM

PM - 

Nice clean tiger beds

Target training with cheetah (Mia) or sometimes lion (Manzi)
Feed any remaining cats, and clean enclosures in and out
Head out for small cat feeds
Play "quail on a rope" with servals and lynx (mood dependent)
Clean inside and out of small cat enclosures
Play mind games with male North Chinese Leopard
North Chinese Leopard ALWAYS wins - sulk a bit then eventually beat him and watch temper tantrum unfold
Feed/clean remaining
Head back to meat room and tidy up
Head to visitor centre for meeting/news

Cheetah target training

Of course things like broken enclosure "furniture" takes priority if it's found, as happened a few days ago when we discovered a rotten support in the female jaguar enclosure. This sort of thing gets dealt with as soon as it's found so the cat can get back to it's outside area as soon as possible. Also general maintenance of enclosures and surrounding areas as we go, so I've been doing some painting and bailing of water to keep things looking good and swamp free too.  I'll eventually go into my detail about all these jobs, especially things like enrichment, which you could quite easily write a phone-book size book about. 

WHF also have some members of the public coming to the site for tours, ranger days or big cat encounters (meet the cats - private tours etc) which are run by pretty much all members of staff and volunteers.  These are done on a more ad-lib basis, and although I'm not fully trained to do them yet, I will eventually (a scary thought!).