Giraffes, tigers and tapirs - a day in the life of a Hamilton Zoo vet

Thursday, 8 August 2019

Veterinarian Andrew Gore show us what a typical day at the zoo looks like for him.

From operating on a monkey's hand to pregnancy testing a rhino, no day is the same for Andrew Gore.

Hamilton Zoo is home to over 600 animals and Gore is the vet with the job of keeping them healthy.

We visit the Zoo on Brymer Road on a Wednesday morning and the 59-year-old has a list of animals to check on plus the unexpected that's bound to crop up with hundreds of roaring, rearing and running charges under his care.

However, the first animal needing attention just happens to be one of the zoo's quieter ones - a giraffe needing its feet trimmed.

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We head down to see the bachelor herd of five.

Jabari, 16, requires his left hoof to be ground down a couple of times a month.

'If we didn't do it he would get sore pretty quickly,' explains Gore. 'So we do a lot of pre-emptive stuff. The inside toe is longer than the other.'

The giraffes are taught to enter the crush to be treated for a variety of aliments

The giant animal is coaxed into a narrow pen with rewards.

Zoo lesson number one: the work is always done with the free will of the animal. A receptive animal is a safe and compliant animal, especially with positive reinforcement.

The giraffes have been trained by keepers to have procedures done in their enclosure - like the foot treatment or have their blood taken.

The leg is lifted and Gore proceeds to file down the hoof with a grinder.

'This is why you want to be a zoo vet, it's fun.'

Gore trained at Massey University and has been contracted to the zoo for the past seven years but has been doing part-time work for them for about 20 years.

Andrew Gore trimming Jabari the giraffe's hoof.

'It's an exciting job, it's wonderful to work with exotic animals and I guess it's every vet's dream to play with tigers, monkeys, and rhinos all sorts of fascinating things. It's a dream job.'

He fits it in with his own private practice, Global Vets, which he started nine years ago.

'It's mainly private animals and what you would expect in a mixed practice. A very large proportion of dairy cow work and an increasing amount of cats and dogs, but we get to see quite a lot of birds and lizards.'

Working with large and often endangered animals offers him a different type of challenge - which has seen some new skill sets developed.

'Most zoo animals can not be handled as you do domestic or farm animals. And that poses some problems as a lot of diagnostic work is achieved almost remotely by observation and the collection of samples like urine and faeces. But of course sometimes we do have to handle them and for some of the dangers species that means anaesthetise them.'

That means extensive use of darts as that is often the only way that those drugs can be administered. While some effort is made to be give medication through food, some like vaccinations, can't be given orally.

Kruger is the zoos bull rhino - and he's going to be a dad again - after getting Kito pregnant.

If an animal has to be anaesthetised then Gore takes the opportunity to do a full examination and any procedure that might be needed.

'We will check their teeth, feet, do a full examination of everything. Sometimes we will take x-rays, we will administer treatments we may not normally be able to do. If we do anaesthetise an animal we make maximum use of it because we try not to do unnecessary anaesthetics.'

Given a giraffe's size it's exceedingly difficult to anaesthetise them - they have a high rate of complications, mainly because of their vascular system geared around a head so high above their heart.

'That is one thing about being a zoo vet is you have to understand a whole lot more limitations than you otherwise would,' explains Gore.

Foot trimming for the day completed we head to the rhino's private enclosure.

Gore checks in on the large male, Kruger, who had been unwell with an stomach issue the previous day.

He's perked up and enjoys a few rubs on his thick hide from his vet friend.

Andrew Gore conducting an internal ultrasound on Kito.

With such a large animal, preparation is key long before any treatment and the rhinos go through the crush pen twice a day so that they are familiar with it when they need to be in one for care.

The keepers are kept busy organising Kito into the crush for her pregnancy test.

'At the zoo, you have to know that things can take time, in private practice you can push through animals a lot quicker but when you are working with zoo animals you have to work to them. So there can be a lot of time spent waiting around.'

The zoo has been lucky in that they've never had an unexpected rhino death - they've been remarkably healthy.

Kito is happily munching on some hay while Gore prepares the internal ultrasound - it's designed for cows and smaller animals but it will do the job.

A rhino's gestation is between 17 to 18 months. They've been checking on Kito every four weeks - when we see her she's about five to six months pregnant and it's likely to be her last internal examination as everything gets too far away for Gore to reach.

Gloved up, Gore is shoulder deep in rhino and is confident he can see enough via the ultrasound to confirm the zoo will welcome another baby rhino next year.

Kito's pregnancy will now be monitored through samples and watching her behaviour.

This is her fourth pregnancy, her last son Samburu is still at the zoo. He's now three-years-old and likely to move on in the near future as part of the Australasian breeding programme the zoo is part of.

The zoo's rhino breeding programme has been very successful with seven rhinos born at the zoo.

Some in-fighting between the monkeys saw one injure his hand.

It's time for Kito along with the other Southern White rhino to be let out for public display.

An unexpected call from a keeper has Gore now heading to the monkey's enclosure - one of the males has suffered a hand injury.

A monkey's finger has been opened up - most likely as the result of a disagreement

The ones closest to humans are the customers Gore has learned to be a little wary of.

'There is no animal that I don't like to treat - in terms of trusting animals, there are certain animals you would never, ever trust. Chimps more than any other are cunning and they will plan attacks.

The tigers prove a different kind of challenge for Andrew Gore with a plan always in place before treating them.

'They are nice to see and interact with but you have to be very, very careful.

'An example is they're given branches to feed off the leaves they will keep a branch, strip ofd the little things and wait until you aren't looking and they'll poke you with it. They won't pick it up while you are looking at them. So you just have to be aware of that really.'

Gore looks at the monkey's hand from behind the fence - considering the dilemma of treating it or not.

'On this occasion, we probably are not going to treat it. Looking at the wound it is probably an old wound that has been broken open again and we know from past experience that surgical intervention is often not a good idea, it's probably best to leave him. He's not even being particularly careful with it so we will monitor it.'

After a walk through the free-flying bird aviary we check in on a monkey on which Gore operated a few days before. The monkey had the majority of its hand opened up - once again most likely through fighting with its fellow monkeys.

He's being kept in a room to allow the healing process to take its course but can look forward to having a couple of older females join him for company.

There's no checks on the Tiger with this day's rounds as they're all well taken care of from a prior visit.

The Hamilton Zoo has its own clinic to do procedures in - with a lot of equipment donated by the Waikato Hospital.

'Obviously handling tigers is very problematic they are exceedingly dangerous and that poses a lot of problems for us,' said Gore. 'If you are anaesthetising an animal that is not dangerous you can be very light on the anesthetic. With a tiger you can't afford to get it wrong. That makes it a lot more stressful because we have to use enough anesthetic to make sure everyone is safe and tigers are very sensitive to anesthetic.'

Gore and his team make sure they are well prepared when handling the tigers.

But it's not something which scares him.

'You've got to focus, this is not the sort of profession for somebody who is going to freeze. If things are going wrong you've got to stay calm and make sense of all the decisions and do so quickly. In this job, something is going to go wrong no matter how well prepared you are and you've got to be able to flex with that and stand up to the challenge. But I think that is also an exciting thing.'

One of the tigers, Mencari, is now 19-years-old - something which wouldn't happen in the wild.

In comparison, Gore says, a lion in the wild would only live around 2.5 to 3 years.

Gore's not the only animal medic on duty. The zoo has vet nurse Trudy Willet on hand every day and she will alert Gore to anything that needs to be attended to.

There's also a specialised clinic on site with such of its equipment familiar to two-legged visitors.

'Quite a lot of the clinic equipment is donated from Waikato Hospital - the table, x-ray machine, and incubator. Waikato Hospital have been very, very good to us.'

Vet Andrew Gore has been working at the Hamilton Zoo in some capacity for the past 20 years.

Hamilton Zoo tries to make the enclosures as natural as possible and often combine a number of species together.

There are plans afoot to get fresh bloodlines for bison in New Zealand

They have their own laboratory where a lot of samples can be looked and also a decent sized pharmacy giving access to drugs at the weekend and public holidays. A must when the zoo is open every day of the year except Christmas Day.

Gore sees an absolute need for zoos to exist.

'There is a serious risk that a lot of our zoo species will be extinct before the end of the century - so the only possibility of our grandchildren seeing a rhino, for example, is probably going to have to be in a zoo.'

He has seen an improvement in the way zoos have changed from fenced in areas to making enclosures as natural as possible.

'Over last 40 to 50 years there has been a massive force trying to naturalise zoos - so we are mixing species as much as we can. So when you've got species that won't prey on each other we try to mix them together - like the free-flight aviary - we've got multiple species in there in a natural environment and the savannah we are trying to do the same thing.

Gore can only see the zoo developing in the future with exciting plans already in the pipeline, especially around the breeding programme.

'Sometimes we do transfers to try and keep the bloodlines good and make sure there is a good diversity. And sometimes transferring adult animals isn't very good so sometimes we will use semen and we have on a number of occasions done artificial insemination.

Gore is planning on trying to develop an artificial insemination programme in the coming year - looking at bison.

'Most of the bison in Australasia came in one big group many years ago and there hasn't been much new blood. So what we are doing is going back to America and seeing if we can get some totally unrelated bison from our bison and try and bring the semen into the country.'

It's all a part of Gore's dream job.