If you have mixed species exhibits or house multiple animals with different diets together, you may want to group diets together.

In general, it is best practice to set up diets to reflect the ways they are both managed and fed. If the animals are fed as a group, the diet should be prepared as a group. If the animals are fed individually, diets should be set up (and also weighed and prepared) individually. And sometimes you want to manage animals as individuals, but feed them as a group. ZDN can do all of these things.

The goal of this advice is to avoid situations where the Nutrition Center carefully weighs out and prepares multiple individual diets only to have the keepers put everything together in a pan, or for the Nutrition Center to carefully weigh out and prepare food in bulk for an area and then the keepers have to weigh the food out a second time as they are portioning it out to individuals. It is most efficient to handle/weigh/prepare the food once rather than multiple times.

ZDN has two(ish) main methods of grouping animals

• Herd (or flock) diets: one diet plan for one or more similar animals. All of these animals would be on the same diet with the same diet number.
  • For example, for a flock of 50 flamingos, you could create a diet of 100 g of flamingo food and assign 50 birds to that diet for a total of 5000 g.
  • By default, each animal is considered to have a value of 1. In the Animals + Enclosures tab, you can set the Animal Units of a listed animal to be something other than 1. For example, you might set it to be less (a smaller animal) or more (a growing/pregnant/lactating animal) than 1.
  • Visual example: 🦆🦆🦆🦆 <- a herd diet. A single diet number (with one or more animals listed) is a herd or flock diet.
• Grouped diets:multiple diets (not animals) combined together. This would be combining multiple diets (diet numbers) together.
  • For example, in one pond you have ducks (who eat duck food), parrots (who eat parrot food), and chickens (who eat chicken food) who are fed together out of the same pans. You can place these three diets together in a Group.
  • The summed diet (duck + parrot + chicken food) will be what is prepared as a single diet, but you can still maintain the three types of diets separately, which makes it easier when birds move around or you want to see the diet history.
  • Visual example: (Diet #32🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆) + (Diet#28🦜🦜) + (Diet#72🐓🐓🐓) = Grouped diet #9004

Examples

Here are some examples of how to apply Herds and Groups in practice:

• A group of 4 similar zebra fed together – Create 1 diet with the amounts for 1 animal. Add all 4 animals to the diet (on the Edit Diets > Animals + Enclosures tab). The group amount will change to reflect 4x the single diet. Visual example: (Diet#35🦓🦓🦓🦓)
• A group of 4 similar zebra fed together. One zebra gets an additional “treat” for taking medication:
  • Option 1 (Good): Create 1 diet with the amounts for 1 animal. Add all 4 animals to the diet (for the diet they have in common). Create a second diet with just the additional treat and assign only the medicated animal to that diet (will generate 2 separate diets for that group). Visual example: (Diet#35🦓🦓🦓🦓) + (Diet#92🍎)
  • Option 2 (Better): Create 1 diet with the amounts for 1 animal. Add only the 3 non-medicated animals to that diet. Copy the diet items. Create a new diet for the medicated zebra. Paste in the diet items from the first diet. Add in the medication treat. This will also generate 2 separate diets for the zebras, but they will be more “readable” by others. Visual example: (Diet#35🦓🦓🦓) + (Diet#92🦓🍎)
  • Option 3 (Best): Begin the same as for either option 1 or 2, but create a Group called “Zebra Herd” and assign both diets to that group. This will generate one combined prep for the zebra group containing all the foods from the two diets. Visual example: Group#9007 = (Diet#35🦓🦓🦓) + (Diet#92🦓🍎)
• A group of 4 adult zebras, plus a newborn foal – Create 1 diet with the amounts for 1 animal. Add all 5 animals to the diet. Set mom’s Animal Units to 1.4 to account for early lactation. Set foal to 0 Animal Units for now. In a few weeks, set foal to 0.5 Animal Units and perhaps increase mom to 1.8 Animal Units. Visual example: (Diet#35🦓🦓 🦓🦓🦓)
• A group of 4 gorillas fed together as a family – one 3-year-old, one adult lactating female (mom), one adult female, one silverback male.
  • Option 1 (Best): Create 4 separate diets (one for each animal). Create a group called “Gorilla Family” and assign each of the four diets to belong to this group. This will allow you to maintain separate diet histories and individualized diet plans for each animal, yet prepare only one set of food that will be fed as a group to the family. Visual example: Group#9009 = (Diet#342🦍) + (Diet#97🦍) +(Diet#98 🦍) + (Diet#99 🦍)
  • Option 2 (Also Best): Create 1 gorilla diet. Assign all four animals to this diet. Assign Animal Units as 0.5 (baby), 1.2 (mom – late lactation), 1 (adult female), 1.5 (silverback). Doing this may make future diet changes easier – you only have to change one diet rather than 4. However, it is harder to tailor diets to each individual. Visual example: (Diet#97🦍🦍🦍🦍)
  • There is no right answer – either option will work depending on whether you are more likely to make 4 separate diet changes when the group as a whole needs a change, or have to do convoluted work when you want to add diet items specific to each individual.
• A group of 4 gorillas fed together as a family – with enrichment items
  • Option 1: Create 5 diets – one for each animal, a fifth for the shared enrichment items (can put all 5 diets together in a Group if desired)
  • Option 2: Create 4 diets – one for each animal, a portion of the enrichment goes on each diet (can put all 4 diets together in a Group if desired)
  • Option 3: If enrichment items are only intended for specific animals and not the group as a whole: Create 4 diets – one for each animal. Add each animal’s enrichment/med/training items to their own diets. Put the diets in a Group as above. Set the Bin for these enrichment items to be different across the 4 animals. For example, you might put the enrichment items for Mom Gorilla in Bin 50, for Adult Female Gorilla in Bin 51, for Silverback in Bin 52, and Baby in Bin 53. Set the “description” for each of these bins to the animal’s name/number to uniquely target foods to those specific containers. But, you might still put all the greens in the same bin across the 4 diets so that those continue to get prepped together.
• Once you have a group in mind, you will need to decide whether you want to prepare that group using bulk or assembly line styles.