Rhino shelter examples/photos?

E

edesigngirl

Member
I am in the process of research for design of on-exhibit heated shelter for rhinos in our Watani/African Plains exhibit at the NC Zoo. Any information about what has worked well/or doesn't (if you have one at your zoo) would be helpful. I am looking for a shelter that can be "themed" or natural. The obvious is a group of kopje rocks, but I was looking for something different, that I may not have thought of yet. Massai mud huts are another possibility, but don't tend to be as large as we may need. Thank you for any info or ideas.....
 
Very basic shelters are used for ours, basically three sided walls open front. I'll see if I can get photos. But the zoo has had great success breeding black and white rhinos, currently 25 rhino are held on site.
 
What are the sizes of your shelters? Great to hear your breeding program is going well. AD wants to be able to leave them on exhibit a bit longer in the cold weather months (this year was abnormally cold) and the heated shelters give us more options for management. Thank you for your reply....
 
I'm not sure by shelter whether you mean a field shelter, wind/rain break etc; or indoor accomodation for the rhinos (I think this is maybe just because of differences between European and American usages of the word).

I guess you mean the latter. Chester Zoo has an African themed indoor area. As you say, doing the whole mud hut thing for rhinos is hard because of the size required. As a result Chester's has an 'African Feel' (thatch roof, mock mud walls) rather than being an accurate reconstruction of a Masaii house. It's glass fronted and huge. Here's some photos :

http://www.zoochat.com/42/tsavo-rhino-exhibit-35484/
http://www.zoochat.com/42/tsavo-rhino-exhibit-35483/
http://www.zoochat.com/748/tsavo-rhino-exhibit-48432/

I can't think of any other examples here in the UK, that I have seen personally, that attempt to recreate anything natural or provide a theming. Certainly no big mock rock kopjes or anything like.

I apologise if this is of no use to you or I've got the wrong end of the stick.
 
Thank you, ^Chris^ and Jarkari.....
I actually am talking about a "field" shelter(s), because our rhinos are on a 35 acre Plains exhibit and come in at night, and on cold weather temp. days/nights......
 
Have you had a look at some of the other large African field exhibits in the US like the San Deigo Wild Animal Park
 
I have, but only a limited amount.....just need to do a bit more research. Thought the forum might offer up some quick info.....
Thanks.
 
The Wild Animal Park has bomas that they can use to seperate animals if they need to, but to my knowledge, they do not pull animals in at night, so they probably don't have anything helpful. Are you mostly interested in a way to disguise said shelter, or more the construction of the shelter itself?
 
I am sure that they don't need to pull in their animals due to year-long warm temps. We are in a fairly warm climate area, but in winter and some nights, it gets consistently below 40 degrees. Because of that, our keepers want 2-3 permanent field structures with heat to give them more flexibility with management of animals. It is my job to make these "structures" fit a theme or be naturalistic. Kopje rocks will be fairly easy to pull off, as we have been making those in house for over 30 yrs. I just wanted to see if there were other looks or options that I hadn't explored to date......Thanks for your reply.
 
Thinking of storyline and aesthetics as well as animal management: rhinos in a boma makes little sense to me. A kopje as a shelter could work but how it ties in to the surrounding terrain will matter.
Rhinos can also be found crashing through thickets, and you might consider a shelter disguised as a thicket (either real and alive or real and dead or artificial). Depending on the approach you choose, some sort of protection would be required.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top