How to Create a Self-Sustaining Husbandry Training Program

 

When designing training programs it is important to follow a process that provides a map to your destination.  We will describe a process or framework that can be used to created and maintain a training program at your institution. This program framework provides the guidance to all members of your team and facilitates consistency throughout the training process. Our goal is to provide a team with various concepts to think about and questions to answer before jumping into the training process.   All programs are different including species, staffing and facility design.  There is no cookie-cutter approach to training; each facility needs to design a process that will work best for them.

If asked the question, “Do you have a training program at your zoo or aquarium?” a director might talk about a diabetic monkey that has been trained to take insulin injections. “Yes, we have a training program.” But what happens if the keeper that trained that monkey leaves the zoo? Does the ability to inject the monkey leave with that keeper? If a director was asked to characterize his/her training program, what would that include? Is this program successful? What is the curator’s role in a training program? These are all difficult questions to answer and perhaps even more difficult to ask.

 Our point here is that isolated training events do not constitute programs.  Similarly, simply identifying a staff position (e.g., Enrichment and Training Coordinator) does not constitute a program. In contrast, providing veterinary care or adequate nutrition to captive animals is not done in a haphazard way. Veterinary care and nutritional plans are integrated programs and there is an expectation at the director, curator, and keeper levels that animals will be medicated and fed in a prescribed and consistent manner (see Shepherdson and Carlstead, 2000). Unfortunately, most training programs are not self-sustaining, i.e.; they are dependent upon a few highly motivated keepers. And finally, some current training programs lack strong leadership or direction (i.e., “What is our goal?”). Zoos and aquariums that have “pockets” of successful training do not have successful programs. A successful program is goal-oriented, self-sustaining, and integrated into daily management of the animals – just as veterinary care and adequate nutrition are integrated into daily management. We suggest that a successful training program is not only integrated into the daily management of the animals, but a successful program is dependent upon three important components: a solid framework; staff perspective, attitude and training; and perhaps most critically, leadership [Sevenich MacPhee and Mellen, 2000].

A. Leadership
Great leadership is not an accident. Being a good leader requires careful planning and continual follow-up. A training program requires the directors’ active support and the curators’ active participation in laying out the framework and fleshing out each element. The leaders must provide a vision for the program. Leaders must communicate to their staff what their expectations are of the team by clarifying everyone’s role in the process. This might include clarifying the director’s expectations, and prioritizing/re-allocating resources. Regular follow-up with staff is critical; such follow-up will also provide information to the leader on whether the program is moving forward. As with anything else in a zoo or aquarium, the ultimate success or failure of a training program rests on the shoulders of the director. If the framework represents a wheel, the zoo and aquarium director must provide the initial “push” needed to put the wheel in motion and indicate the direction he/she wants that wheel to go [Sevenich MacPhee and Mellen, 2000].

B. Staff Training
Continuing the “wheel” analogy, if the framework/process is a wheel, following the director’s initial push, it is the line staff (keepers as well as managers, curators, veterinarians) who provide the momentum to keep the wheel moving. In order for staff to keep the wheel moving smoothly, some staff training may be necessary.

 For a program to function well, the staff must receive two types of training:

Leadership/communication/problem-solving skills
(“How do I work with my team to develop and maintain training plans? How do I involve the ‘curmudgeons’ who don’t want to be involved in training? How do I facilitate a meeting in which a managers/keepers/curators/veterinarians says, ‘We can’t do this because we don’t have the resources’?) These “challenges” are not unique to initiating an enrichment or training program. Thus, if resources are allocated for staff development (e.g., a problem-solving workshop), these skills can assist in a wide range of issues. Staff can be provided training to assist them in focusing on what they can do, not what they can’t do. Staff can come to the table with solutions, not problems (see Stevens et al., 2000).

Technical skills (“How do I train that monkey to accept insulin injections?”). With regard to husbandry training, reading materials, workshops, classes, or mentoring may be necessary. A process for integrating new keepers also is critical for the program to maintain its integrity over time. When a team member leaves and new ones are added, this “institutional memory” could be lost if care is not taken to transfer this information to new staff. An inconsistent staff leads to inconsistent animal interactions which leads to inconsistent behavior/response in the animal. At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the authors and a cross-section of area curators, zoological managers, and keepers have developed a class on husbandry training. This course (mandatory for all animal care staff) is team-taught by the Curator of Behavioral Husbandry and several zoological managers. The course begins with an overview of training, terminology, playing the “training game,” and some background in problem-solving. Some of the content of this course will be available on a web site by June of 2001.

   New Keeper Integration 

When new keepers transition onto a team, it can cause challenges to the program. If the new keepers are not integrated onto the team properly, the result may be that the animal’s trained behaviors may not meet the same criteria or be lost all together. New undesirable behaviors may begin surfacing or interpretation problems between team members may erupt. To avoid these challenges a plan for the integration of new team members needs to be designed and utilized by a team.

A good integration plan includes providing the new keeper with the following information:

       Description of program philosophy and area training goals.

       A resource to review all current training plans, cues and criteria for behaviors, and record keeping format (e.g., a document/checklist describing these).

       Step by step description of the process the new keeper needs to achieve to be integrated successfully.

       A definition of the roles of all the team members participating in the animal training process.

 At   Disney’s Animal Kingdom ® Theme Park all of the teams are required to have a written process to integrate new team members. Some of the teams have been continually refining this process to maximize its use. Some of the New Keeper Integration  examples can be found in the “Tools” section.

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