A while ago I was asked by CarlosG72 (you might know him from his amazing dinosaur fossils) to build an Indian Rhino stall for his zoo. I tried my best to be as realistic as I could, by consulting the EAZA's husbandry manual for the Indian Rhino for example. To see how well I did, I asked a real life zoo designer to be as critical as he could, and it was quite brutal haha.
Since the video is quite long I'll put some interesting points from it in this post, but if you want to see the full showcase of the stall, including all the comments from the zoo designer, check out the following video:
Let's start with the feeders I designed. The first feeder you see below was really appreciated. The spacing between the logs are big enough for the rhino to fit their head through, I took all these measurements from the husbandry manual. The designer particularly liked the window in the back that allows keepers to easily get food into the feeder.
And what was so good about the first feeder, is exactly what's poor about the second. I ran out of space, so let keepers access this feeder from the side, making it really difficult to get food all the way in the back.
For these stalls I designed a bunch of different doors and gates, and they all had strengths and weaknesses.
Let's start with the indoor gates, used to move rhinos between parts of the stall. The big problem with them that the designer pointed out was that you have to pull the gate to close it. If a rhino protests and puts any force on the gate while you're pulling it, you actually might lose an arm! So yeah, definitely gotta redesign that.
The gate I used on the outside of the stable does not have this issue, and also has another big advantage over all other gates and doors I built: it does not have a bottom railing.
If you look at the outside doors for example, here I did include a bottom railing, which is good for the stablility of the door, but dirt, poo and the woodchips used for the flooring of the stable can get stuck in the railing, blocking the door.
The last door related issue has to do with the logs I put on the doors. I put logs on the doors and walls, because the husbandry mentioned that having too many flat surfaces will cause the rhino to damage their horns, since they'll start rubbing them on the surfaces. Putting wooden planks or logs on the walls prevents this, so I did.
The problem with doing this on doors is that it makes the doors need a lot of extra space to slide into a wall. This is problematic because you need the doors to be as much a tight fit as possible, when a rhino pushes against that door, you want it to stay firmly put.
So the logs on doors and walls are to prevent the rhinos from scraping their horns, but the logs on the metal bars have an additional purpose, they also prevent the rhinos from making a lot of noise banging against the bars, according to the husbandry manual. According to the designer, the problem with the way I put them is that since they are up against the concrete, when they get wet from, say, a rhino peeing on them they will start to rot around the bottom, so you always want to have logs off the ground, like I did with the walls.
Speaking of things that are gross and wet. I also created some issues regarding the maintainance of water. First off, the drinking spots of the rhino are in the back of the stable, making them hard to clean for keepers without entering the stable.
The rhinos also have a pool in their stable, since it's important for Indian rhinos to bathe frequently. But what I didn't account for is that this water will get incredibly filthy, and I did not put any sort of water filtration in the stall, aside from some drainage in the pool.
So far, most problems encountered are relatively easy to fix, but these last 3 really aren't. First off, the separation box. The husbandry manual mentioned you need a stall that serves as a separation box, be it for giving birth, holding a sick animal or introducing new animals. When I built it I had no idea what sort of requirements this separation box had, so I just built a smaller stall to the side and called it a day. The amount of problems the zoo designer was able to point out here was kind of embarrasing haha. The stall has no place for the animal to get foor or water, it is very small, which find for a short amount of time, but introducing animals can sometimes take a while. Also, in regards to introducing animals, the stall is completely blocked off, with solid walls and doors. It'd be impossible to introduce animals to eachother in there.
Now, a pretty minor but major thing. The windows above the stalls are facing east. The lighting of the game might not convey it to the strongest extent, but in real life, if a keeper entered these stalls in the morning and wanted to look at the rhino, the sun would be blasting into his face. It's be impossble to see anything. So yeah, basically the entire building would have to be rotated 180 degrees.
As is having to rotate the building entirely wasn't bad enough, when the designer asked to see the layout of the stall from above it became appearent I'm probably best off redoing the entire stall. The biggest issuse are that:
-The separation box does not have an outside holding area, which is definitely important to have when you want to clean stalls (especially in the winter).
-It's almost impossible for zookeepers to take heavier equipement into the stalls to clean with. Having to shovel up 100kg of poo per rhino every day is appearently not done by hand haha.
That's most of the points, if you want to hear more, feel free to watch the video! I learnt a lot from this experience, and I hope you did too. The designer will be back on my channel soon, as we're going to take a tour around my main planet zoo project, which is a recreation of the zoo he works for! Can't wait to see, and share, what he thinks!
Since the video is quite long I'll put some interesting points from it in this post, but if you want to see the full showcase of the stall, including all the comments from the zoo designer, check out the following video:
Let's start with the feeders I designed. The first feeder you see below was really appreciated. The spacing between the logs are big enough for the rhino to fit their head through, I took all these measurements from the husbandry manual. The designer particularly liked the window in the back that allows keepers to easily get food into the feeder.
And what was so good about the first feeder, is exactly what's poor about the second. I ran out of space, so let keepers access this feeder from the side, making it really difficult to get food all the way in the back.
For these stalls I designed a bunch of different doors and gates, and they all had strengths and weaknesses.
Let's start with the indoor gates, used to move rhinos between parts of the stall. The big problem with them that the designer pointed out was that you have to pull the gate to close it. If a rhino protests and puts any force on the gate while you're pulling it, you actually might lose an arm! So yeah, definitely gotta redesign that.
The gate I used on the outside of the stable does not have this issue, and also has another big advantage over all other gates and doors I built: it does not have a bottom railing.
If you look at the outside doors for example, here I did include a bottom railing, which is good for the stablility of the door, but dirt, poo and the woodchips used for the flooring of the stable can get stuck in the railing, blocking the door.
The last door related issue has to do with the logs I put on the doors. I put logs on the doors and walls, because the husbandry mentioned that having too many flat surfaces will cause the rhino to damage their horns, since they'll start rubbing them on the surfaces. Putting wooden planks or logs on the walls prevents this, so I did.
The problem with doing this on doors is that it makes the doors need a lot of extra space to slide into a wall. This is problematic because you need the doors to be as much a tight fit as possible, when a rhino pushes against that door, you want it to stay firmly put.
So the logs on doors and walls are to prevent the rhinos from scraping their horns, but the logs on the metal bars have an additional purpose, they also prevent the rhinos from making a lot of noise banging against the bars, according to the husbandry manual. According to the designer, the problem with the way I put them is that since they are up against the concrete, when they get wet from, say, a rhino peeing on them they will start to rot around the bottom, so you always want to have logs off the ground, like I did with the walls.
Speaking of things that are gross and wet. I also created some issues regarding the maintainance of water. First off, the drinking spots of the rhino are in the back of the stable, making them hard to clean for keepers without entering the stable.
The rhinos also have a pool in their stable, since it's important for Indian rhinos to bathe frequently. But what I didn't account for is that this water will get incredibly filthy, and I did not put any sort of water filtration in the stall, aside from some drainage in the pool.
So far, most problems encountered are relatively easy to fix, but these last 3 really aren't. First off, the separation box. The husbandry manual mentioned you need a stall that serves as a separation box, be it for giving birth, holding a sick animal or introducing new animals. When I built it I had no idea what sort of requirements this separation box had, so I just built a smaller stall to the side and called it a day. The amount of problems the zoo designer was able to point out here was kind of embarrasing haha. The stall has no place for the animal to get foor or water, it is very small, which find for a short amount of time, but introducing animals can sometimes take a while. Also, in regards to introducing animals, the stall is completely blocked off, with solid walls and doors. It'd be impossible to introduce animals to eachother in there.
Now, a pretty minor but major thing. The windows above the stalls are facing east. The lighting of the game might not convey it to the strongest extent, but in real life, if a keeper entered these stalls in the morning and wanted to look at the rhino, the sun would be blasting into his face. It's be impossble to see anything. So yeah, basically the entire building would have to be rotated 180 degrees.
As is having to rotate the building entirely wasn't bad enough, when the designer asked to see the layout of the stall from above it became appearent I'm probably best off redoing the entire stall. The biggest issuse are that:
-The separation box does not have an outside holding area, which is definitely important to have when you want to clean stalls (especially in the winter).
-It's almost impossible for zookeepers to take heavier equipement into the stalls to clean with. Having to shovel up 100kg of poo per rhino every day is appearently not done by hand haha.
That's most of the points, if you want to hear more, feel free to watch the video! I learnt a lot from this experience, and I hope you did too. The designer will be back on my channel soon, as we're going to take a tour around my main planet zoo project, which is a recreation of the zoo he works for! Can't wait to see, and share, what he thinks!
