Good employee welfare = Good animal welfare! In this episode, we go over some useful tips and tricks to avoid burnout and learn to soar in the animal care industry. Check out my article on this topic as well: https://wildenrichment.com/articles/learn-to-soar-dealing-with-burnout-in-the-animal-care-industry/ 

Animal welfare is a continuously evolving science and proactively keeping on top of the welfare needs of every animal in a collection is a tremendous undertaking, but looking critically at the people and processes around you as well as your own skillset is a great place to start, find out more on today's podcast! 

Link to full article: https://wildenrichment.com/articles/are-you-leaving-welfare-on-the-table/

In this short episode, I talk about my thoughts on reptile enrichment and where I think everyone should start when they are looking to make a reptile's life more enriching and increase their welfare. 

Today we are sitting down with the incredibly talented Sarah Feliciano and Matthew Owens to chat about their company, Zoo Enrichment Lab. 

Check them out on:

Their website: https://zooenrichmentlab.com 

Their shop: https://zooenrichmentlab.com/store 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zooenrichmentlab/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zooenrichmentlab/ 

In this episode I sit down with Emily Cain and Nick Naitove of WildThink and we chat about their company, the enrichment vending machine as well as some important topics surrounding enrichment. 

Check them out at:

https://www.wildthink.org

https://www.instagram.com/wildthinkenrichment/?hl=en 

https://www.facebook.com/wildthinkenrichment/ 

This podcast is one that has been in the works for a while now! I’ve spent a lot of time creating enrichment plans and behavioural husbandry programs for a variety of exotic animals, and many of the key concepts and ideas transfer over to the domestic animal world. So let’s take a deep dive into what a behavioural husbandry program for a domestic horse might look like and how it will not only benefit your beloved horse, but also allow you to have fun doing it!

Check out my article: https://wildenrichment.com/articles/a-guide-to-domestic-horse-enrichment/

In this episode Ben and I sit down to talk about how to go about setting a baseline for an enrichment program and what that even means. We also answer some audience questions about what to do with an animal that just wont interact with enrichment! Enjoy! 

In this episode we are once again joined by Ben! We talk about how you can go about getting your team on board with an enrichment program and what to do when a team member won't budge. We also talk about how important it is to get everyone on your team on the same page when it comes to enrichment evaluation and overall interpretation of animal behaviour. Enjoy!

An important concept to always keep in the back of your mind with behavioural husbandry, is the fact that you are trying to enrich the lives of the individual animals under your care and not the entire species. What I mean by that is, when you are designing an enrichment program, you need to design the program to benefit the individual animal or group of individuals that you are caring for, many of these individuals will have special needs, tendencies and behaviours that could stray from what we envision the “ideal” needs, tendencies and behaviours should be, based on what we know about these animals in the wild.

I think that the ability to think critically and make “good” decisions is one of the most important skills in animal care. Luckily It’s a skill that can be learned and improved upon with some practice. Here’s a podcast on how to do just that, check it out!

Based on the article "How to Think Critically and Make Better Decisions in Animal Care"

https://wildenrichment.com/articles/how-to-think-critically-and-make-better-decisions-in-animal-care