Lecture 18- Exotic animal nutrition Flashcards
What are the challenges with exotic animal nutrition?
• Few true exotic animal nutritionists • training sites?
• Lack of cooperation (between zoos) • shared resources allow specialization
• Willingness to change (within zoos)
• Experimental data on requirements
• Funding and animal availability
• Animals living in ambient environments different to their native
regions
• Cooler or warmer than the animal has evolved in
What is the diversity of exotic animals?
- Over 1 million animal species identified • 4000 mammals
- 9000 birds
- 6300 reptiles
- 4200 amphibians
- 18,800 fish and lower chordates
- 3000 species represented in zoos
What is the nutritional knowledge base?
- Nutrient needs known for 11 species • rats and mice
- dogs and cats
- pigs and humans
- cattle and sheep
- horses
- chickens and turkeys
How can you formulate a diet for exotics?
- Extrapolation from related species
- Modifications for:
- digestive system morphology and function • metabolic body size
- stage of development
- physiological function or workload
- natural habitat and feeding strategies
- natural dietary items preferred
What is the gut and metabolic body size and the influence of that?
- Includes oral anatomy
- Ex., black rhinoceros vs. white rhinoceros
- foregut vs. hind-gut fermentation
- modifications of fermentation chambers • other herbivores
- omnivores
- carnivores
What is the importance of prehension in diet formulation?
• 1:White Rhino (“wijd” = wide) • Squared off upper lip used to “crop” grass • Grazes on savannah -•2: Black Rhino • Prehensile upper lip for browsing • Consumes bushes and shrubs in forest
Why is the stage of development important?
- Birth to 1 day
- Pre-weaning
- Weaning to puberty • Puberty to maturity • Mature period
- Senescence
What needs to be considered in terms of physiological and/or workload?
- Pregnancy • Lactation • Disease
- Environmental conditions • Weather
- Space restrictions • Animal density
What about habitat and feeding strategies?
- Eisenberg’s Matrix widely used
- considers both habitat and food preferences
- Feeding behaviors very important
- Feed preferences somewhat important
- Wild-type diet vs. optimal diet
- Feeds eaten in their natural environment may not be available to zoo animals
- Food vs. nutrient requirements • Captive vs. wild animals
What is the classification of ruminants by feeding preference?
- Classes of ruminants • Concentrate selectors
• Intermediate feeders • Roughage grazers
What are the characteristics of concentrate selecting species?
- Properties
- Evolved early
- Small rumens
- Poorly developed omasums • Large livers
- Limited ability to digest fiber
- Classes
- Fruit and forage selectors • Very selective feeders
- Duikers,sunis
- Tree and shrub browsers
- Eat highly lignified plant tissues to extract cell solubles • Deer,giraffes,kudus
What are the characteristics of intermediate feeding species?
- Properties
- Seasonally adaptive
- Feeding preference • Prefer browsing
- Moose,goats,elands • Prefer grazing
- Sheep, impalas
What are the characteristics of roughage grazing species?
- Properties
- Late evolved
- Larger rumens and longer retention times
- Less selective
- Digests fermentable cell wall carbohydrates
- Classes
- Fresh grass grazers
- Buffalo, cattle, gnus • Roughage grazers
- Hartebeests, topis • Dry region grazers
- Camels, antelope, oryxes
What are the goals for diets?
- Diets should:
- Promote health
- Allow reproduction • Promote longevity
- Consider:
- Economics
- Ease of storage and handling
What are other considerations to consider with diet?
- Frequency of feeding
- daily requirements vs. weekly vs. constant
- Competition for feed (group feeding)
- Feed sorting
- Order of feeding
- ruminants and other herbivores
- Protein quality vs. quantity
What do you have to consider in terms of nutrition and aging?
- Tooth wear and loss
- Rumen environment
- Body condition
- Increased nutrient requirements • Decreased absorptive capacity
What are the problem nutrients?
- Protein
- Calcium
- Phosphorus
- Nutrients requiring carrier-mediated transport systems • Fat and fat-soluble vitamins
- Antioxidants
What is the importance of beta carotene?
- Effects independent from vitamin A
- Low beta-carotene intake
- increased inter-estrus intervals • delayed ovulation
- low LH peak
- low blood progesterone
- increased embryonic mortality
What are the strategies and speculations with diet selection?
- Age-based feeding systems where possible • immature forages
- increased nutrient density • processed grains
- smaller meals
- total mixed rations
- Supplements
How do you monitor ration success?
- Faecal consistency (firm)
- Time spent ruminating (8 hours)
- Rumen fluid pH (above 7.0)
- Plasma urea nitrogen (14-16 mg/dl) • Hoof health
What are the carnivore families?
- Canidae (dogs)
- Ursidae (bears)
- Mustelidae (otters, badgers, skunks, weasels, BF ferret)
- Pinnipeds (3 families)
- Felidae
- Procyonidae (raccoons, coatimundi)
- Hyaenidae (hyenas, aardwolf)
- Viverridae (civets, genets, fossa)
- Herpesidae (mongoose, meerkat)
What are the unique challenges in exotic animal nutrition?
- Nutrient Requirements are unknown.
- Exotic NRC’s currently available. • MinkandFoxes,1982
- Non-Human Primates, 2003
- Groups are housed together. • Various physiological stages
- Various body conditions
- Multiple species exhibits. • Feeding behaviors.
Why do carnivores have high protein requirements?
- When we eat a high protein diet:
- High hepatic amino acid metabolic enzyme activity
- High amino acid catabolism
- High nitrogen disposal
- High rate of gluconeogenesis
- Advantage of this metabolic adaptation:
- Catabolize excess amino acids and remove excess nitrogenous wastes.
- Strict carnivores such as felids CANNOT down regulate hepatic catabolic enzymes.
- Felids catabolize substantial amounts of protein after every meal regardless of protein content of the meal.
What are the characteristics of prime hunters?
- Acute senses: sight, hearing, smell.
- Cooperative hunting.
- Killing strategies:
- Weasels = smash prey’s skull by strong bites to back of the head.
- Felids = typically strike at the neck to snap the spinal cord. • Canids = violently shake to dislocate the neck.
What are the skeletal adaptations of hunters?
- Fused wrist bones = absorbs shock of running.
- Short collarbone for increased mobility and longer stride. • Flexible spine.
- Felids have retractile claws.
What are the nutritional idiosyncrasies in felids?
- High protein requirement.
- Specific requirement for 2 amino acids: • Arginine
- Taurine
- Arachidonic Acid
- Preformed Vitamin A
- Preformed Vitamin D
- Inability to convert tryptophan to niacin
- Anatomical differences from other carnivores • Fewer teeth = no molars
- Shorter gastrointestinal tract
- Insignificant cecum
- Lower ability to digest plant carbohydrates
What are the nutrition requirements for tigers?
- General requirements of 140 kcal kg0.75
- 123 kg female requires 5170 kcal/day (~3.1 kg commercial diet) • 160 kg male requires 6300 kcal/day
- Appetites improve if the animals are fasted 1-2 days per week
- Bones fed for teeth health and enrichment
- Diets mixed on site need to be kept clean
- Preparation spaces important (need to be free of pests, chemicals & microorganisms) • Labour intensive
- How much does a wild tiger eat? • Varies but about 10-12 kg per day
- Wild animals will gorge themselves
What do you base the diet on with felids?
-Amounts Fed Based on Energy Density of Diet and Animal Weight
• Feline requirement = 50-70 kcal * body weight (kg). • Example = African Lion
• Current weight = 275.5 kg
• 70 kcal * 275.5 kg = 19,285 kcal/day • 19,285 (kcal) / 3,384.6 (kcal/kg)
• 5.69 kg per day.
What are clinical nutrition and considerations for felids?
• Oral disease = excessive dental plaque and calculus formation. • May lead to complications such as compromised renal function, liver
abscesses.
• Renal Disease.
• Food storage, handling and preparation considerations. All meat is inspected.
Are wild canids similar to domestic candids?
- Wild canids are VERY similar to domestic canids. • Energy requirements =
- 90-145 kcal * Metabolic Body Weight0.75
What are the nutritional considerations for canids?
- High polyunsaturated fatty acid content results in high lipid peroxidation and loss of Vitamin E.
- Thiaminase has higher activity in frozen fish.
- Result of feeding frozen fish = low in Vitamin E and Thiamin. • Fish are dosed with supplement prior to hand feeding.
What are the nutrition requirements for orangutans?
- Opportunistic generalistic herbivores • Water required
- Drinking and for play
- Spend ~60% of the day foraging
- Important for enrichment
- Large home range (5-6kms for reproductive females) • Eat 1-25 foods per day
- Preference for fruits
- Vegetative parts of many plants can be toxic in large quantities • Neighbouring females will share trees & food resources
- Will eat insects (
What are the nutrition requirements for chimpanzees?
- Primarily eat fruit
- Also flowers, seeds, leaves and insects (1-5% of diet) • Will stalk and kill other monkeys and small animals
- Monkey ‘biscuits’ can be fed
- But should be accompanied by fresh fruits etc.
- Foraging accounts for >50% daily activity • Important for welfare and enrichment
- Should be fed multiple times per day
- Excessive indoor housing can cause vitamin D deficiencies
- Fruits should be fed whole
- Skins house important nutrients
What are the nutrition requirements for red panda?
- Require bamboo daily • At least 200g
- Important fibre source
- Excess fruit & veg can be dangerous • Not nutritionally important
- They do like them (sweet!)
What are the nutrition requirements for rhinoceros?
- Consume a large number of diverse plants
- Nutritional imbalances are believed to be responsible for many health issues in captivity
- Domestic horse is a good model for rhino nutrition to be based from • NRCforhorsesisused
- Grazing rhinos (white) need grass
- Browsing rhinos (black & Sumatran) need mixed legume hay and hays etc.
- Concentrates are fed to balance energy, protein & mineral requirements etc. • Pellet size needs to fit type (smaller pellets tolerated by browsing rhinos)
- DMI of 1-1.6% of bodymass per day
- Wean at about 6 months • Weaningisslow
What are the characteristics of sloths?
- Medium sized mammal • 4-9kg
- Foliovore - browse feeders
- Leaves are primary food source
- Also eat insects, lizards & carrion • 1200 – 6500 m2 home range
- Large slow acting stomachs
- Bacterial fermentation
- Digestion can take >1 month! (11-30 days)
- 2/3 of body weight can be stomach & its contents
- Low BMR
- Less than 1⁄2 predicted based on body size
- Low core temperature (30-34°C)
- Spend about 70% of their day resting or sleeping
- Stomach, spleen & liver in different locations to other mammals • Due to upside down lifestyle
- Four-chambered ‘rumen style’ stomach
- Low water requirement
- Can concentrate urine well
- Will drink more in captivity compared to the wild
What is unique about sloth fur?
• Sloth fur is unique:
• Outer hairs grow in opposite direction to other mammals (away from
extremities) to protect from elements
• In moist conditions a symbiotic cyanobacteria lives in fur to provide camouflage
• Outer fur is thick & brown but can appear green due to the bacteria that the sloth can lick to obtain nutrients from the bacteria
• Slow movement provides camouflage
• Sloths will only move when necessary and move slowly
• They have 1⁄2 as much muscle tissue as other mammals of comparable size • Spend most of their time hanging upsidedown from branches
