The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo opened the doors at its Animal Care Centre for the media for the first time in a decade, as part of a behind-the-scenes tour for International Veterinary Technician Month.

The sneak peek couldn’t come at a better time, as the zoo introduces dozens of new baby animals to the public after a summer of births for tapirs, lemurs, river otters, wood bison, and penguins.

Carmen Peccie, a registered veterinary technician at the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, said that there was a lot of excitement around the new animals—but that every day was exciting working with species big and small, from the giraffes at the largest to tadpoles at the smallest.

“We really enjoy getting to do physical exams on them and making sure they’re healthy. So we have a couple of up-and-coming exams to get our first look at some of those babies, but it’s just lovely seeing all the little ones. That’s a huge perk of our jobs for sure,” she said.

At the Animal Care Centre, the zoo’s species under 200 kilograms are cared for with specialized veterinary equipment, but also some of the tools that most patients would be familiar with at their local hospital or clinic.

The centre has a computerized tomography (CT) scanner, x-ray, and ultrasound imaging tools that wouldn’t be too out of place for human patients. In some cases, because those machines come from the human health care field.

But other tools to administer oxygen and anesthesia to the animals are more specialized. To address the numerous sizes of muzzles and mouths that each of the animals has, staff sometimes have to be creative to make their own masks, said Peccie.

“We do deal with all different sizes of animals. One day… we might have a dental procedure for a lion in the morning, and then we might have an ultrasound procedure for a frog in the afternoon. So, our veterinarians have to really adjust with their the size of the animals they’re dealing with, and we have equipment that actually relates to that as well,” she said.

Dedicated resources on-site to keep animals healthy

For the animals that weigh up to 200 kilograms they are brought to the Animal Care Centre in the dedicated ambulance that the zoo has for their species.

That is used for routine checkups or to bring the animals in for urgent or emergency care. The veterinary team also has mobile care equipment that can be brought to the zoo’s enclosures for animals that don’t need to be transported for care or are too large.

Peccie said what happens in a day at the centre varies.

“There are a lot of animals. It does vary, just depending on the need and also our seasons. We also have different times of the year that are set up for different species, and especially our conservation species. Our Vancouver Island marmots are always done in August, because we need to get those pups checked so that they can go to Vancouver Island, to the facility there,” she said.

“Our burrowing owls come in when they’re little nestlings, and they come here in June. We’re doing their procedures in June, July. It is a bit seasonal with us, but otherwise we just schedule annual procedures for the animals, for preventative exams, and then if there is any illness or animals aren’t doing their normal thing.”

That means gathering a blood sample and doing a radiograph, because as Peccie puts it, the animals themselves can’t tell the staff what is wrong.

“We might just get a note from our animal care technicians that, ‘hey, somebody didn’t eat as well as they normally do today.’ So, we can schedule them an appointment and we bring them here and take a look, and potentially do an ultrasound and take a look and see if there’s anything abnormal internally, or just if they’re having abnormal blood work,” she said.

Having the ambulance also means they can transport animals quickly to the Animal Care Centre, so they don’t have to remain under anesthesia for long to get examined.

But, if one of the larger and more dangerous animals begins to wake up, the staff are well prepared to deal with that, said Peccie, for both the safety of the animal, and for the staff.

“We always have a team of four people on a dangerous animal procedure. So we have two people involved with the actual procedure. So we’ll have a veterinary technologist involved with placing a catheter or drawing the blood samples, and then we have a veterinary technologist entirely focused on the anesthesia,” she said.

“Same thing for the veterinarians. We have one focused on the procedure, the exam, and then we have another veterinarian completely on anesthesia. So we always have two professionals monitoring that anesthesia. We’re constantly monitoring for any responses.”

The latest knowledge and the latest research

For the veterinary teams, it means having to know a lot about a lot of different animals.

“It’s hard to keep up because we’ve got so many different species to keep up with. Yes, we do get to know them, and they’re all so special, and we definitely have our favourites. But I think we’re all just so impressed with every single one when they come here and just see you know their uniqueness,” said Peccie.

“My favourite was Skokie, our grizzly, who just passed. But Maple the moose is a favourite of mine. We got to bottle raise her when she was a baby, when she first came here. So she’s very special, and we always stop and say hi to her whenever we see her.”

The takeaway, she said, was that the care team does its best to ensure that all the animals are healthy, including ongoing training and learning to apply the latest techniques.

“There is such a community within the zoo community, with all the zoo veterinarians. They have their own association, and they’re constantly sharing information and going to conferences and doing research papers and then reviewing those. So our veterinarians are excellent at keeping up with all of that,” said Peccie.

“Then, our teamwork with the University of Calgary, we have veterinary students that do internships here. So right now, we do have one veterinary student, and we will have a lot of veterinary students at the teddy bear clinic.”

The public will get a chance to learn more about the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo’s animal care team on Saturday, Oct. 11, during the annual teddy bear clinic, starting at 9 a.m.