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Zoos provide another market for farmers to sell their goods
 


CINCINNATI, Ohio — Ever wonder where many zoos across the country get the food for their animals? Much of it comes from the farming community.

The Cincinnati Zoo has cut costs by growing much of its own animal food at its Bowyer Farm property near Mason. On this 637-acre parcel are plants including hackberry, olive, elm, pear, grapevine, sassafras, mulberry, birch and hickory – perfect for many animals at this zoo.

Still, the Cincinnati Zoo relies on the farming community in a big way. In one year it spends $265,000 on produce. That’s more than 250,000 pounds of 32 different kinds of fruits and vegetables.

“We have one red panda that will do anything for grapes and another red panda that likes mango,” said Senior Keeper Lissa Browning. “Humphrey the camel loves carrots, but his female companion likes sweet potatoes. The manatees alone eat more than 58 heads of lettuce a day.”

The zoo also uses between 6,000-8,000 bales of hay each year. The kinds of hay include timothy grass, alfalfa and a mix of orchard grass and alfalfa.

“Between the four elephants total that live here, they eat 450 pounds of hay each day,” Browning explained.

Each year the Cincinnati Zoo also needs 300,000 pounds of 75 types of grain to feed its animals, including primates, parrots, flamingos, wolves, polar bears, goats, pigs and others. Add to that the need for 14,000 pounds of apples, 7,125 pounds of grapes, 12,500 pounds of carrots and 145,600 pounds of lettuce.

Browning said feeding more than 500 species with a wide range of dietary needs is a huge undertaking. And, she pointed out, the animals are picky eaters.

Other zoos have become resourceful as well. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, operated by the Ohio’s parks district, gets fallen trees from the parks for its elephants, which eat the bark. The Dallas Zoo grows bamboo and cabbage as decoration and, later, as food for the pandas. However, the Dallas Zoo relies on its farming brethren to lend a hand.

At the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., the zoo commissary is the size of a basketball court and has – thanks to farmers – huge bins full of various meats, fruits, leafy greens like lettuce, kale, cabbage and spinach, four tons of bananas and 100 tons of hay.

In addition, this zoo needs millions of chirping crickets.

“We try to have this function as much like a restaurant kitchen as possible,” said Mike Maslanka, one of the two nutritionists who run the kitchen at this zoo. “I don’t like the crickets so much; you end up with escapees.”

A quick phone call to the St. Louis Zoo found it requires 10 tons of carrots, 5.5 tons of apples, 18 tons of romaine lettuce, 13,000 bales of hay, 1.2 million adult crickets, 1.6 million mealworms and more on an annual basis.

The Hay Exchange in Plant City, Fla., started its business 20 years ago by supplying fresh, quality horse hay to feed stores in the center of the state. The business has expanded and now includes supplying hay to the top zoos in the United States.

Closer to home at the Indianapolis Zoo, visitors to the African exhibit named “Plains” will find animals among cozy beds of hay. Lots of warm bedding here is, again, thanks to area farmers.

Kevin Scott, former president of the Delaware (Ohio) County Farm Bureau, has sold hay to the Columbus Zoo in the past, and has sold to circuses when they came through the region. Butch Schappacher, who owns a farm and ran a popular farmers’ market in Mason, once sold hay to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens.

Jerry and Zach Burton have raised bamboo on their 22-acre farm in Cincinnati for the past 30 years. The largest part of their business is growing and shipping it to more than 20 U.S. and Canadian zoos to feed red pandas. These animals consume about 8 pounds of the plant a week.

“Every Monday I ship 8-pound bags of bamboo by FedEx to zoos such as Edmonton Valley Zoo in British Columbia, Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines,” Jerry Burton said.

In this region alone there are 40 major zoos, aquariums or rainforests, all with the need for farmers’ produce. There are six major zoos each in Ohio and Indiana, nine in Illinois, eight in Tennessee, seven in Michigan and five each in Iowa and Kentucky.

“Zoos across the country depend on the sale of produce from farms everywhere,” Maslanka explained. “Producers should make it a point to tap this market because it’s not going away anytime soon.”

8/16/2018