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</style> <![endif]--><strong><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;;"><img class="size-full wp-image-378 aligncenter" title="training_tails" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/header_training_tails.jpg" alt="training_tails" width="317" height="68" />Where you can share your training experiences!</span></strong>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;;"><em>Training Tales Editors: Jay Pratte, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;;"><em>Kim Kezer, Zoo New England; and Angela Binney, Disney's Animal Kingdom</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"></p>

<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;;"><em>Through positive-reinforcement training, an ostrich is
successfully conditioned to take a daily dose of medicine

By Anna Hergt, Animal Management Intern
Zoo New England, Boston, MA</em></span>

<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;;"><strong>Background</strong>
In June 2010, I began a 10-week internship in the Hooves and Horns area at Zoo New England’s Franklin Park Zoo located in Boston, Massachusetts. After learning the various animal husbandry tasks of the area, and getting used to the schedule, I was given the opportunity to take on a project as part of my internship.

Ernie is the only male blue-necked ostrich (Struthio camelus molybdophanes) housed at the Zoo. He had been diagnosed with right leg lameness and was prescribed Cosequin®, a powdered joint supplement. The medicine could not be mixed in with his diet because he shared the yard with two female ostriches, and there was no guarantee that it would be delivered to him completely. Instead, a plan needed to be developed to train Ernie to approach the keepers consistently for his daily dose of medication.

Though certain novel items sparked his interest enough to come within reach of zookeepers to be hand-fed, there was no reliable method in place to get him to consume the required daily amount. He would often exhibit behaviors such as refusing to come off exhibit, refusing to stand up from sitting, refusing to take medicine hidden in a variety of different food items, or walking right by the keeper and ignoring them altogether. This resulted in an average consumption of ~30% of his medication during the period of 1 March 2010 to when my training began on 15 June 2010.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1849" title="ostrich" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/ostrich.jpg" alt="ostrich" width="505" height="376" />
<strong>Fig. 1. Ernie, the blue-necked ostrich <em>(Photo: Anna Hergt)</em></strong>

Originally, a plan needed to be developed that was realistic for the allotted three-week time period I had remaining as an intern. I began with the notion of discovering what food item was motivational, and conditioning him to a bell as soon as he became more reliable in taking that item from me. I created a behavioral log to track his progress, and began working with Ernie an average of two sessions per day.

<strong>Training</strong>
My initial approaches began with attempting to lure him over using reward items such as small pieces of carrot chosen for their bright color, small apple chunks, lettuce, kale, mealworms, applesauce mixtures, regular diet grain, and wet grain. Realizing that this was not progressing in the direction I needed, I switched my approach to luring him over using enriching non-food items such as a variety of shiny silver bowls, a red grain scoop, a cow bell and a red bandana. All of these proved not be motivating enough for Ernie. He was responsive, however, to neon pink tape stuck around the edges of a silver bowl. He came over quickly to investigate the novel item, but spent very little time interacting with me and consumed very little grain.

At this point, I reevaluated my methods and came up with a training plan based on what I had discovered about Ernie. Through experimenting I was able to build a relationship with him and understand his individual behavioral traits, instead of assuming characteristics based upon research and natural history of the species. Since he wasn’t seemingly food-motivated, I spoke with other keepers about their efforts and observations when attempting to deliver his medicine. After observing many training sessions with other animals, I discovered that the training itself could be a reward. For example, one morning our male lion did not eat, but he easily took his same diet food as reward treats during a training session later in the day. I decided to figure out a way to make Ernie think that eating his medicine was fun, and be motivated to eat his medicine-laced treats by that fact alone.

I also wanted to look at qualitative data in order to find trends that would lead me to the development of a more stable training plan. I looked into his medical records and daily husbandry logs through Franklin Park Zoo’s database system. I first began by looking specifically at what diet items he most often consumed. I looked back three months to 1 March, and found that if his medicine was given with grain he had an average consumption rate of ~49%. If given by other methods, this number was reduced to only ~15%. This is all relative to the total average consumption of ~30% during that time period, as previously mentioned. From this data, I decided to use his regular diet grain for training and delivering medicine.

Looking next at his average consumption rates at different times of the day, I found that he…….
<em><strong>
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