Junior Keeper Experience at Edinburgh Zoo

We visited Edinburgh Zoo last weekend as I had booked my daughter a Zoo keeper for the day experience for her birthday. We hadn’t been for a year so had been looking forward to it for a while. We arrived 10 minutes before the zoo opened at 9am, but not before a quick brekkie at Toby Carvery along the road (always handy). We arrived bright and early, camera and wellies in tow. We were greeted by our host, Sam, and ushered past the queue into the shop to fill out some forms then it was up to the keepers’ building where we were told what we would be doing and my daughter was given her keeper t-shirt.

First up was cleaning out the home of the Azara’s Agouri, and the pudu, mucking out all the rubbish and putting in fresh hay straw and food, it didn’t take long but as the keeper  said it's an important part of the job! 

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We then met Dylan the armadillo, who isn’t out for the public to see, so we felt very privileged! Especially as we found out he has starred in a Harry Potter film! We made up his food and took him out to the grass for a run around, and my god he was fast. We also had a quick hold of a white owl and my daughter fed him something gross, I don’t know how she does it but nothing phases her.
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We had a walk down to the bottom of the zoo to visit the pelicans in their lake. This was my favorite bit. Taylor got to feed them fish but each one had a different coloured bracelet on their ankle so it was made into a kind of game because they had to have the same amount of fish each. These birds are gorgeous, and have loads of personality, and a little bit mad!
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We had a bit of spare time before we visited the next animal so we went back to the keepers hut for a bit of hands-on with a bearded dragon and the cutest little mini hedgehog (not it’s official name! I must remember to write things down)

Then it was on to visit the lemurs where Taylor and the keeper sat inside with them and fed them fruit while they clambered all over them. They were in for about 30 minutes. If you don’t want to pay for the full experience you can buy the Lemur magic moment on it’s own and I can definitely recommend it, it’s fantastic. The photo below is a bit dodgy, but it has to be done through the window so it’s as good as I was getting, oops.

Lastly was a walk down to the penguin enclosure where Taylor was invited in to feed them their fish while everybody watched! They really are the cutest little things and they have a brilliant big enclosure themed beautifully with loads of water for them to play around in. If you go when the babies have hatched you can see them sitting with their parents under their sun umbrellas. 

If you have a child who is animal-daft, or indeed you are, you can find out more about the Keeper experiences on the Edinburgh Zoo website ​http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk