For most users, once you have institutional approval and support, the next steps are:

1. Setting up your zoo
2. Entering diets

Setting up your zoo

• Depending on the size of your zoo and the aspects of ZDN you will be using, this can take a few (3-5) hours, or 10-20 hours for a large institution.
• It’s usually fairly straightforward to set up your zoo areas and import your animals. Less straightforward is entering your food lists and perhaps cleaning them up and standardizing the names (i.e. cleaning up duplicates such as “Apples”, “APPLES”, “APPLE”, “apple”, and “Red Apple”), importing any nutrient analysis data, pricing, and setting up recipes.

Entering diets

• The person who sets up the diets in ZDN should be familiar with ZDN, the institutions’ diets, or ideally both. Unless you have very straightforward diet records currently, there is likely a lot of shorthand and inaccurate terminology (teams call foods different names than the kitchen does, etc.) that needs cleaning up and this typically can’t be done by your average volunteer without considerable support.
  
• Option 1: Start with an animal area
  • I typically recommend people start with their “easiest” area – the simplest diets or the most enthusiastic team – whatever will make it manageable.
  • This is a GREAT opportunity to sit down with each area and really ensure that your diet records reflect what the team is doing. Try to capture EVERYTHING that is fed including training, enrichment, supplements, and medication items. Browse and pasture grazing can be estimated for inclusion as well.
  • With just the one area, print out diet books and share with the keepers as well as the nutrition team. Go over what works, what doesn’t. If possible, use the new diet books (or touchscreen) to prep diets for a few days and evaluate what works well and what didn’t.
    
• OR…
  
• Option 2: Start with an easy prep station (centralized commissary)
  • This method works best if the overall system is already centralized and working well. In this case, enter the diets for one kitchen prep station (in my experience primates and hoofstock diet prep are often good places to start). Enter the diets, print them out (or display them on touchscreens) side by side with your existing books/whiteboard/etc. and review with the staff what works, what doesn’t.
  • Once they’ve approved the new format, try it on just the one station for a few days. Pick your most enthusiastic/capable of handling change team member to pilot this. If you can, come in early and be present (i.e. at a neighboring table, or assisting nearby) for the first run-through. It is possible that MANY things will come up that need to be tweaked. Continue coming in early to shadow/help until that one station is running smoothly, your kitchen team is familiar and trained with the program, and the animal areas are not reporting mistakes. Depending on how much prep/review was done before starting, this could be a day or two up to several weeks if there are many issues to be worked out.

After you have ONE area or station entered and working well…

• Communicate with your leadership and animal care and health teams about how it went – get their feedback. Show them the new diet sheets. Perhaps show them the software with their familiar animals and diets featured prominently. Be sure to get this feedback before continuing on to rolling out additional areas/stations so that you can work with concerns along the way.

Roll out the rest of the areas one a time…slowly…carefully

• Go one area (or prep station) at a time. Let it run for a few weeks before moving on to the next station. Each area/station will present its own special challenges. Stop and listen for feedback often. Visit the kitchen and animal areas often to see what they think. Show keepers their new diet cards (or books). This might be an opportunity to “gift” each area with a shiny new binder filled with their diets. Or just a shiny new PDF diet book if you’ve gone paperless.
• Celebrate your wins! Track your progress through each area. Throw a party when you are done!