Zoo Hospital

The function of the ‘veterinary unit’ of Nandankanan Zoological Park is quite diverse. Besides having a major role in captive wild animal health assessment and treatment this unit shoulders responsibility in prescribing permanent and seasonal feeds, processing of bio-samples, conducting both ante and post mortem examination, taking research activities with the help of O.U.A.T professors, training of students of different universities.

Different units of zoo hospital

Isolation ward

Generally houses sick captive wild animals of the park seeking special health care and close attention round the clock.

Quarantine Ward

This ward provides space for temporary housing of rescued animals which are under observation against any transmissible infection besides the ailing zoo animal who suffers from any acute infectious/contagious diseases, which is immediately separated from the healthy ones and treated in the quarantine ward.

Operation Theatre

A twenty-minute drive through the meandering roads crisscrossing the natural forest in a specially protected vehicle takes the visitors straight into pride of lions in the lion safari over an area of 20 ha established in the year 1984.

Computerized Radiography System

This is one of the important units in the hospital complex which offers detail investigation of different ailments through X-Ray for planning effective therapeutic management for the ailing individual.

Feed Distribution Centre

This happens to be a very busy centre in the premises where the feeds containing hundreds of items for different species of park denizen are received daily mostly in the fore noon hours from different agencies/ suppliers. The feed items are processed and supplied to an individual species as per their natural preferences.

Zoo Laboratory

Zoo laboratory does generally engage itself in different routine investigation of different bio-samples for quick diagnosis of any major or minor health problem as and when required. Routine examinations of fecal sample, blood smear, skin scrapping and whole blood of different captive animals are conducted for quick diagnosis of different health problems.

Pangolin Breeding Centre

This centre has been established on 11.07.2009 in the hospital premises under the assistance of CZA and has been exclusively dedicated for the behavioural study and captive breeding an endangered species i.e. pangolin. In the specialized cell the pangolins are kept either in pairs or single and put under the 24hours monitoring system through hitech CC camera to record their behavior and breeding activities.

Egg Incubation Room

Two fully automatic egg incubators of 500 egg capacity each are installed in ‘Egg incubation Room’ where eggs of silver pheasant, golden pheasant, lady Amherst’s pheasant, white peafowl, normal peafowl, mandarin duck, red jungle fowl eggs are successfully incubated and hatched.

Activities

Day to day activity: it starts at 8.00AM morning every day with a routine round. Zoo vets along with livestock inspector do usually visit each and every enclosure and take the fresh stock of the health condition of zoo animals by interacting with the animal keepers. After the morning round the zoo vets plan for specialized close investigation and treatment of any ailing animals and birds if any with the help of animal keeper and zoo hospital staff. Over and above of this routine visit and emergency treatment, zoo vets are committed to routine health care activities like deworming, vaccination and other chemoprophylactic programme as per the prescheduled plan. Daily feed inspection by the zoo vets is an integral part of the zoo hospital activity. In this context, Zoo vets regularly visit the feed distribution centre for inspection of different food items in order to ensure optimum quality of the fresh , nutritious and balanced food for different species of captive animals.

Deworming: Deworming is carried out for both the ecto and endo parasites on regular basis as per the schedule. To control ticks and external parasites in carnivores acaricide spray is done in every two months.

Chemoprophylaxis: To safeguard the carnivores against the deadly haemoprotozoan disease (trypanosomiasis) chemoprophylactic triquin is administered at four months interval. Anti tubercular chemoprophylaxis incase of the herbivores is carried out for consecutive six months every year to combat incidence of tuberculosis in herbivore population in the park.

Vaccination: Vaccination programme for the big cats against the deadly feline panleukopenia is carried out every year as per the schedule. Apart from that regular vaccination against H.S,FMD, tetanus, rabies and Anthrax is carried out in elephant and other herbivore population.

Maintenance of hygiene and sanitation: Hygiene has the utmost importance as far as the health of the captive wild animal is concerned.

Hygiene of feeding cubicle and enclosures: To maintain hygiene of the feeding cubicle and enclosures of precious animals, Kohrsolin-TH spray is carried out every month.
Provision of foot bath with KMnO4 lotion dip is provided at the entrance of every enclosure
Water sanitizer like Sukrena W.S. is regularly applied in the water which is supplied to the precious birds and other sensitive and delicate animals for drinking purpose

Research activity and publication in journals: Barring the main objective of zoo like entertainment of visitors, zoo provides an ideal platform for conducting research on different endangered species of wild animals. Accordingly, the zoo vets of this park are also actively associated in different research programme based on conservation breeding and some of the burning health problem of scheduled animals. The findings of such research work are published in different journals for the general welfare the zoo fraternity both in and outside the country.