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.
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 2023 as the "Animal Diet Database", and many institutions downloaded it and adapted it for their use.
In 2023, Heidi switched institutions and started making further development on the system with the permission of her current institution and SeaWorld/Busch Gardens.
Release History
- 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.
