Prior to International Zookeeper Day, a zookeeper from a local zoo wishes to share her journey with the local community.
International Zookeeper Day has been set to promote awareness of the important role zookeepers play in wildlife conservation on 4 October every year since 2015.
Healesville Sanctuary keeper Louise Tegg started her professional career as a zookeeper in 2018.
The zookeeper has worked with a range of different animals over her time at Healesville Sanctuary and is currently working with dingoes, emus and tawny frogmouth as well as participating in the Spirits of the Sky bird presentation.
“We take care of basic husbandry needs, cleaning their habitat, monitoring their health. We also do a lot of training,” Tegg said.
“All of our animals are trained to participate in their own healthcare, so they are trained to step up on scales or let us check them.
“For example, the dingoes will let us check their ears, eyes and inside their teeth.”
The Spirits of the Sky is the iconic bird presentation at Healesville Sanctuary, showing the natural behaviours of a variety of native birds which may include the Wedge-tailed Eagle, Black-breasted Buzzard, Barking Owl, magnificent parrots and more.
Tegg said the cool thing about the Spirits of the Sky is that it’s up to the birds, whether or not they participate.
“One of the best things about my job is working on that presentation and getting to connect with people, educate and talk to people and show them the incredible native birds that we have,”
“All of the birds have the choice to fly out into the arena, and if they don’t want to come out, they don’t get punished.”
Although it seems everything went smoothly for Tegg to be a zookeeper, the zookeeper also went through a period when she considered her future.
She was torn between being a veterinarian and a zookeeper.
Having two different options, she took a bachelor of animal and veterinary bioscience at the university.
Tegg said she originally wanted to be a vet.
“Like most zookeepers, I have always loved animals, and as a kid, I would go and collect bugs from my garden and put them in little terrariums at home,” she said.
“Through my university studies, I got an opportunity to do some work in South Africa with wildlife and absolutely fell in love with it, and that’s what put me on the path of wanting to be a zookeeper.
“Zookeepers don’t look after animals when they are sick like what vets do but look after them through their whole life and make their whole life really positive.”
Including her experience at the wildlife reserve in South Africa, Tegg experienced a number of different zoos.
She took work placements at Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Zoo while she was taking her Certificate III TAFE course in captive animals.
Since she started working for Zoos Victoria, she has grabbed opportunities to work for Healesville Sanctuary and Melbourne Zoo.
Tegg said Healesville Sanctuary is very special.
“We’re [Healesville Sanctuary is] set in the beautiful Yarra Valley, we have such incredible grounds, we’re surrounded by native Australian plants, we have lots of wildlife, not just wildlife that we look after, but wildlife that just happens to call the grounds home like echidnas, possums and birds, all of diverse native Australian flora and fauna,” she said.
“We have a lot of conservation programs that we run too. Zoos Victoria has 27 different species helping to save from extinction and a lot of those breeding programs are based here at Healesville.
“Every time our visitors come into the Sanctuary, they are directly helping to fund and work towards those conservation goals.”
