Keeper Numbers and Shifts

Coelacanth18

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10+ year member
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A line of questioning for those who are familiar with zoo operations: exactly how many animal keepers does it take to run the operation? While the scale is obviously important, I'm curious about the workload that each individual keeper can handle. How many keepers are required for a 50-enclosure reptile house? Or a troop of 15 chimpanzees? And since zookeepers probably aren't expected to work every single day of the week, how much overlap is there between keeper responsibilities?

Part of my interest that is related is also what the situation is at night. Are there usually keepers who stay and tend to the animals at night, or is this only done on an as-necessary basis? And how many of those keepers do they need relative to the facility's size?
 
You probably won't be happy with the first part because the answer is going to be: depends and pretty much different every single place.

But I can give you some rough answers on the rest. You pretty much have to figure that for MOST zoos they will have two shifts. One that comes in the early before opening hours and that will generally leave in the early afternoon and a second that would generally come in the late morning and leave at closing time.

As a rough figure - figure that for every two keeper positions you will need at least three people to cover days off, sick days and vacations. So if for instance you had two reptile keepers for both shifts you probably need
6-7 people. etc.

For most zoos there are no keepers at night, but they do have watchmen
who will most likely not check in on the animals individually in any way.
But that changes for pregnancy/illness watches at times.

One thing that is probably the same in almost any industry though- the more people hired the less actual work gets done per individual.

Also for small zoos they are heavily dependent on volunteers to help with the animals whereas at larger zoos volunteers usually have very limited duties involving the animals directly.

Hope that helps some
 
This is a very good question, I'll try my best to help answer it for you :)

Overall, the answer to your questions varies widely, from facility to facility, and species to species.

For the past three places I've been at, things were as such:

A smaller facility, collection was mainly fish and reptiles, along with some birds and marine mammals. Over my time there, we varied between 16 and 21 animal care staff, and 2-4 education staff. As a general rule, having more staff did enable us to put more back into the animals (in terms of training and handling sessions), however the facility has had as few as 11-12 AC staff for extended periods of times and they still managed fine. We would usually divide staff by four sections, fish and reptiles, birds, flex and marine mammals. Generally 2 a day on birds, 2-3 on MM, 5-6 on F&R, and 2-3 on "flex". Flex staff in theory could move between all three sections in the day, but in practice were usually the newer staff who where either training or tasked with the more "mundane" duties. While I was there we had around 6-7 people who did the majority of the MM stuff, 8-10 who did bird stuff (all MM people also did bird stuff) and almost all the staff were trained on reptile stuff. Keepers would only stay overnight for specific reasons, which usually worked out to around a week or two worth of night shifts a year. The facility was armed and locked up at night, we had security that would do rounds around the outside of the facility ever hour or so at night. In terms of diet prep is was largely fish and reptile staff, but all staff were trained on food prep. Staff were at the facility between 7:30 and 6:00

Another is a medium-large facility, mixed collection roughly half mammals, 1/4 birds, and 1/4 herps. Year round animal care staff is generally in the low 20's, with 3-5 education staff. During the on-season there is a number of seasonal's hired on, generally around another 8-10 animal care hires and 10-15 education hires. For specifically animal care, there are usually around 15 or so people on a day. There are a number of shifts per day. On average its 4 on elephants, 2 on carnivores, 1 on birds of prey, 2-3 on marine mammals, 1 on hoofstock, and the remaining seven or so working with the other birds, smaller mammals, reptiles, and commissary. There are also "unassigned" positions, these keepers will work wherever keepers are needed (often times this shift is very useful for getting exhibit work done). During the on season add another 3-4 a day working with the program and contact animals. Many of the staff are cross trained in different areas, some areas being more "exclusive" than others, and generally staff will work between 2 and three different areas in a week. Keeper staff are generally at the zoo between 7 am and 10 pm. The bulk of the heavy work (so feeding and cleaning) is done in the mornings, then after 1:00ish most of the work is training and more specialized tasks. Daytime staff start heading out between 3 and 5, and are replaced by a smaller amount of night keepers, who stay until 8-10 pm. These keepers do mainly food prep for all the animals in the evening, as well as feeding out PM diets and meds, and sometimes some training and cleaning, as well as patrolling the grounds. After 10 or so the night keepers are replaced by a security team that patrols the grounds until keepers arrive the next morning.

At yet another facility (this one I would classify as large), it by far had the most keepers and ed staff. I can't remember exact numbers, but there were generally 20+ keepers on a day, and several ed staff. There were a bunch of different areas, south american birds, oceanic birds, african birds, elephants, carnivores, african...mostly hoofstock, african primates, asian primates, reptiles, childrens zoo, commissary, quarantine/vet holding and a few other areas. Most smaller animal areas had between 2 and 4, and larger animal areas had between 3 and 5. Commissary was I think two staff a day. Generally, there was little cross training, whatever section you worked in was "your" section. There were some swing keepers who would move between different areas, but generally it was in the different bird areas or whatnot (so no staff going from elephants to childrens zoo, for example). Keepers were there for similar times to the above facility, and yet again with a security team there overnight.

As a general rule, a well funded facility of any reasonable size will have AT LEAST 10 staff on a day, while one that operates with less of a financial buffer will usually have 2-8 paid staff a day, and a larger amount of volunteers, interns, and other non-paid "staff". Often times these facilities are "smaller" (in either physical size or collection size) as well.
 
Here is an interesting one. At Wildwood Zoo in Marshfield, WI, the entire collection is maintained by just one keeper. Even though it is a small zoo (21 species), I was surprised to learn this. They must do a lot of work.
 
As previous posters have stated, it all depends on the facility. But for the facility I work at, for a herd of 6 elephants and one rhino, there are 6 full time keepers, a manager, and a number of part time staff and volunteers. On any given day there are 4 full time keepers in. For our reptile building which is probably right around 50 animals, we have 3 full time keepers with 2 in every day. Our troop of 5 gorillas and two groups of 3 orangutans have 5 full time staff that work primarily with them. Our facility doesn’t do split shifts and everyone is in at 8 and out at 5. In total, our facility has 850 animals and a little less than 40 full time keeper staff. Depending on the area, that is generally a bigger ratio of animals to keeper than normal for a facility of that size. For example, Omaha has 6 elephants currently I believe and 10 full time staff that works with them.

There is overlap to where every keeper gets to work with every other keeper in the area at least once a week and sometimes every keeper is in on one day usually for meetings or other reasons. We do have at least one staff on grounds 24/7 although it’s usually not keeper staff. Sometimes keepers come in to do special watches if an animal is expecting or ill.
 
Thanks for the responses so far, everyone.

In total, our facility has 850 animals and a little less than 40 full time keeper staff. Depending on the area, that is generally a bigger ratio of animals to keeper than normal for a facility of that size. For example, Omaha has 6 elephants currently I believe and 10 full time staff that works with them.

Interesting to have more than one staff member per elephant. Is there a specific reason why there is usually more keepers per animal like that? Is the workload for an elephant herd just so large that it requires that many people to maintain them?
 
Further on this topic, what about veterinarians and vet techs? What does the ratio of vets to animals look like at most facilities? That being said, I know that smaller zoos will outsource to an exotic vet in the area if it's too expensive to hire their own.
 
Interesting to have more than one staff member per elephant. Is there a specific reason why there is usually more keepers per animal like that? Is the workload for an elephant herd just so large that it requires that many people to maintain them?

It has to do with the workload that comes with cleaning and maintaining two large yards and a large indoor facility. Also each elephant probably gets 5 or more training sessions a day plus enrichment plus shifting them in and out of the yards. I think in the modern day, an elephant facility should have at least a 1:1 ratio of elephants to keepers.
 
what about veterinarians and vet techs? What does the ratio of vets to animals look like at most facilities? That being said, I know that smaller zoos will outsource to an exotic vet in the area if it's too expensive to hire their own.

Again a depends situation. No rules on animals to veterinarian ratios but some truisms:
a lot depends on the type of animals displayed. An aquarium can have huge amounts of animals but even the largest may only have 2-3 veterinarians.
A zoo that is mostly reptiles may only have one. Generally speaking the more mammals the zoo has the larger the veterinary staff. Few (if any) zoos will have specialist veterinarians that work only on say reptiles or birds, virtually all work on all the species.
AS you said small zoos probably have an on call veterinarian, not a full time staffer. As for techs they are not as numerous as you might expect.
At most there is probably one for every veterinarian but at most places I would expect more veterinarians to techs. One factor is that larger zoos generally have a veterinary student doing a preceptorship at all times which kind of serves as a defacto tech. Another is that keepers generally serve
the duties that a tech would in the veterinary world. Plus keepers love to be involved in the veterinary care.
 
Here is an interesting one. At Wildwood Zoo in Marshfield, WI, the entire collection is maintained by just one keeper. Even though it is a small zoo (21 species), I was surprised to learn this. They must do a lot of work.
After doing a bit of research, they have 55 animals, give or take (excluding the honey bee hive). So their ratio of keepers to animals is 1:55. Especially surprising when you consider they do keep some dangerous species (Kodiak Bears, Cougars, Gray Wolves, American Bison).
 
Here is the numbers for the Capron Park Zoo, an 8 acre zoo in Massachusetts.

Keepers- 8 (4 or 5 on any given day, work in 2 shifts- 7-3 and 9-5)
Operations staff- 2 (exhibit construction, repairs, landscaping, etc.)
Education staff- 2 plus A LOT of volunteers
During summef- additional 4 education staff and additional 2-4 operations staff.
There are not always a keeper at the zoo, but there are multiple staff members in walking distance if a problem does arise, there are security cameras and other measures to keep the zoo safe overnight.
 
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