Environmental Enrichment - Polecats

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European Polecat Enrichment July 2009 - Hanging Food from a Bungee Cord

Below shows the polecats having their food hung from a bungee cord in their enclosure. This means they cannot drag it off into their nest box and it takes them longer to feed. It increases their activity levels, as well as the amount of time they are on show, as they are nocturnal animals and will spend most of the day asleep in their nests.

Their food on this occasion was a pigeon. They are carnivorous, and at the park they get a varied diet of chicks, quail, rabbit and pigeon. We try and feed them in different ways to increase their activity, increase their mental stimuli and increase the time they are out feeding, so visitors get to see them.

Usually feeding them like this increase their feeding time by about 1-2 hours, where as the days their food is just placed in the enclosure, they usually drag it into the nest in a few minutes and spend the rest of the day asleep.

European Polecat Enrichment May 2009- Log feeder

The idea behind the log feeder is to put mashed up meat from the polecats daily diet and push it into the holes around the log to make them forage and work for their food. Normally chicks/ mice get thrown or hidden in the enclosure and they eat it within a few minutes. This prolongs the feeding activity of the polecats. We wanted the enrichment to encourage them to spend longer out during the day as they are nocturnal animals, and often spend the majority of their day asleep in their nest boxes. The feed log proved very successful, they spent well over an hour trying to get all the meat out from the holes.

Want to Help?

A visit to the Cotswold Wildlife Park can now be even more worthwhile. By adopting an animal, you can provide a helpful contribution towards the costs of keeping and feeding the animals and supporting our conservation breeding programmes... click here for more information