Humans may be curious about how the cold winter weather affects the animals at the Manitowoc Lincoln Park Zoo; Seehafer News spoke recently with Kathy Schema, Curator of zoo animals, and asked about changes in diet and feeding.
“Their diets pretty much stay the same except for in the fall when we’ll increase certain animals a bit with their food to help them gain their weight. For example, the lynx we added an extra 100 grams of meat to their daily diet. They got to the point to maybe four weeks ago when they started leaving food behind, so now we’re going back to their normal diet.”
Schema explains some animals like the porcupines are “not out as often but they do come out to eat.”
“We’re wasting a bit of food with it freezing so we’re just not giving them as much. (We’re) giving them more of the dried food that doesn’t freeze, versus the produce that they would normally eat.”
The zoo curator said you won’t see the prairie dogs, as they’re in hibernation.
“Yeah, the prairie dogs are the only animals on zoo grounds that you would not see because they would be underground. They’ll hibernate, stay under as long as they want to come back up in the spring.”
Winter hours at the Lincoln Park Zoo are from 7am to 3pm Monday through Saturday with the zoo CLOSED on Sunday.
