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Manage, analyze, and prepare diets for animals in zoos and aquaria.
Evaluate wildlife diets
Track changes in diets over time

Free zoo diet management software

Download ZDN

Zoo Diet NaviGator is a full-featured diet management system for zoos and animal professionals.

For zoo professionals

Zoo Diet NaviGator supports Animal Husbandry staff in recording animal diets and keeping track of how a diet has changed over time and why. Foods can be set up on different schedules such as different days of the week, or rotations such as every second or third week to allow for variation and enrichment. Diets can be quickly adjusted, increased, decreased, or copied to a new animal. Diets can be created for herds or flocks of one or more animals, and diets can be grouped with other diets for mixed-species exhibits.

Zoo Diet NaviGator supports nutritionists, veterinarians, and other professionals interested in assessing the nutrient composition of the diets offered. With the click of a button, the nutrient composition of the diet can be analyzed and compared with recommendations for different species. Zoo Diet NaviGator can keep track of multiple nutrient analyses for each food, including different lots of hay and fish.

Zoo Diet NaviGator supports commissary and kitchen management professionals by supporting a variety of different styles of animal food operations. It can be used by institutions both with and without a centralized kitchen. Staff can prepare diets using paper books, daily stickers, or digital touchscreens, or a combination of all three, depending on your operation. The various workflows are designed to maximize kitchen speed and reduce mistakes. The software also helps with inventory, ordering, estimating costs, and budgeting.

Zoo Diet NaviGator works with ZIMS, but does not require it.

For other animal care professionals

Zoo Diet NaviGator is used by many universities to teach nutrition. Students can input diets for animals and analyze them. It is also used by researchers to evaluate the diets of study animals, both wild and laboratory by inputting the nutrient content of their diet items. Finally it is used by wildlife rehabilitation and rescue groups to manage their diets. They may not use all aspects of the software, but it is flexible enough to accommodate different needs. See the Use Case guide for how to adapt NaviGator to non-zoo uses.

Other Languages and Accessibility

It has been translated into multiple languages (Spanish, French, and Chinese so far) and can be translated into any language. It has accessible design including accommodations for color-blindness, low-vision, and right-or-left-handedness.

History

Zoo Diet NaviGator began life as a basic label and diet card printing system at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay around 2010 developed by Dr. Troy Tollefson who did much of the original heavy lifting of getting Busch Gardens’ animal diets entered and organized into the system.

It was gradually and slowly expanded into a fully-fledged commissary operations system by Dr. Heidi Bissell starting in 2012, who added many new features such as diet analysis, recipes, budgets, and the ability to group diets. However, once Busch Gardens switched to using Tracks to manage animal records and diets, the project was abandoned.

Tracks has an excellent commissary module that does many of the same things as ZDN. It is included with Tracks or can be purchased as a stand-alone product. If you are interested in a professionally-supported alternative to ZDN, contact Tracks.

SeaWorld/Busch Gardens was kind enough to release the project under the GNU GPL 3.0 license, which means the software is free to use, free to modify, and free to redistribute both by non-profit and for-profit organizations and individuals. The project was available from 2017 through 2022 as the “Animal Diet Database”, and many institutions downloaded it and adapted it for their use.

In 2022, Heidi switched institutions and started making further development on the system with the generous permission of both her current institution and SeaWorld/Busch Gardens. The program is fully in use at her current institution and ZDN is under active development for the foreseeable future.

Why is it free? What does that mean?

It is free because it was originally released as freeware (GNU GPL 3.0 License) by SeaWorld. It is free because Heidi doesn’t have time to provide the level of support that paid users would expect. However, Heidi is committed to helping this be a tool widely used by the zoo community. Currently updated versions with new features are released every ~6 months.

There are numerous resources online and an active user community. The software is under active development by Heidi and others. The platform, Microsoft Access, is deliberately chosen and maintained to provide a low barrier to entry for users of all skill levels. No two zoos operate alike, and zoo diet operations are complex and highly specialized, so the need for people to be able to make their own modifications is also high. Users are encouraged to share their modifications or ideas with others, and many user-developed suggestions are incorporated into future releases.

There are ongoing free training opportunities via Zoom roughly every two weeks. The zoom meetings can be for help installing, help using, or help getting started with customizing the softwarew for your own use. For assistance beyond the online documentation or the regular trainings, Heidi can provide custom consultations.

Release History

  • 2025 April – Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.5 release (English, Spanish, French, Chinese)
  • 2024 Dec – Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.4 release in English and Spanish
  • 2024 July- Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.3 release
  • 2024 March – Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.2 release
  • 2024 Jan – Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.1 released
  • 2023 Sept – Zoo Diet NaviGator v2.0 released as fully functional (with some beta features)
  • 2023 Jan – ZDN v1.7 released as an updated and re-branded version of the Animal Diet Database
  • 2017 Sept – Animal Diet Database 1.0 released under GNU GPL 3.0 license.

Future