Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust - Animal Health

Animal Health

The good health of the animals in Jersey and at the Trust’s captive breeding centres overseas ensures breeding success, and the staff endeavour to ensure that diseases, parasites and injuries are prevented through excellent day-to-day care. The Trust’s Veterinary Centre, which opened in the grounds of the Trust in 1978, regularly monitors the health of all the animals in Jersey and overseas, and new arrivals from the wild or other zoos are kept in quarantine and isolation to safeguard the health of the resident animals.

If an animal is sick, the Trust's on-site biologist examines samples of faeces, blood and urine for vital clues to diagnose the illness. If an animal dies, a post-mortem is carried out to establish the cause of death and also to increase the Trust's scientific knowledge and understanding of very rare species. Samples taken by specially trained staff are also sent in from the Trust’s in-situ breeding programmes, and a diagnosis and instructions for treatment from the vet are sent back by return. The Trust’s vet and veterinary biologist have both made visits to the captive breeding centre in Ampijoroa, Madagascar, where they spent time screening the captive populations of endangered tortoises and turtles, and training staff in effective sample taking and post-mortem techniques. Blood and tissue samples are preserved for posterity to ensure that the Trust has references for future research purposes. The veterinary hospital includes a consulting room, operating theatre and recovery area. It also has X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopic examination facilities.

Major operations on the great apes are undertaken by a team of vets and doctors and consultants from Jersey's General Hospital. It is not unusual to find hospital anaesthetists, radiologists, obstetricians and paediatricians assisting the veterinary team.

The Trust's animal registrar maintains records of births, deaths and exchanges between zoos of animals worldwide. The registrar receives daily reports on the breeding, behaviour, nutrition and health of the animals which are then recorded in a computer software programme called ARKS (Animal Records Keeping System). Over 600 zoos worldwide use ARKS and each institution submits its data to a central organisation, ISIS (International Species Information Systems), to create a global database which is shared by all participating zoos.

In addition to general animal records, medical notes are maintained on all the animals in the collection in the same way that doctors keep notes on their patients. This information is stored in MedARKS, which is an adaptation of the ARKS database and can also be accessed by other zoos around the world. With regard to using the MedARKS system, Durrell Wildlife has been at the forefront of zoos in the British Isles, working closely with the American vets who designed it and running courses on the island to train other zoo practitioners to use it.

The accuracy of the ARKS and MedARKS systems relies on animals being correctly identified. While it may be easy to identify the male gorilla Ya Kwanza within his family, identifying individual pink pigeons or poison arrow frogs is more difficult. An ID transponder or microchip, the size of a grain of rice, is placed under the skin by injection. It emits a ten digit alpha numeric code which is recognised by a scanning device. This also enables the Trust's Research Department to identify animals during studies. Most research involves the observation of animals, without disturbing them, and includes studies on general behaviour, on feeding and on parental care of offspring either in the Trust grounds or overseas.

The Trust's aim is to understand every aspect of the lives of the animals at the Trust to ensure their successful management in captivity and enhance their survival in the wild.