Zaltana Anatolians

I firmly believe in what's known as Environmental Enrichment, which means keeping animals busy so they don't get bored and dull. When I was a kid and we went to the zoo there were always some animals who were moving aimlessly about constantly performing the same stereotypy behaviors (I think that's what it's called). Nowadays zoos go to great lengths to keep animals busy with toys and also by making the animals work for their food. This may sound strange, but most animals in nature have to constantly search and hunt for food to meet their nutritional needs, but when we bring them into our homes, we hand out a bowl of food, the animal satisfies its nutritional needs and what would normally take them all day, can be accomplished with no effort on their part. So what are they supposed to do the rest of their time? This is where environmental enrichment comes in. First, we try to make it a little more challenging for the animals to get their food, then we provide some species appropriate toys or objects of interest and then we can also provide some interactive toys.

As one can see in these pictures, toys don't have to cost a lot. Here I am using an empty lemonade bottle that is rather sturdy, and I fill it with alfalfa/oat pellets. I leave the cap off so the goats can smell the pellets, and of course that leads to them wanting to eat them. It took Maya a few days to get more interested in the challenge at hand.

Now in this picture she has pushed the bottle so it is standing up, of course the food doesn't come out that way.

But when the bottle sits up like in the previous picture, she can easily grab it and pick it up.

And then she flings it up a little and voila, the treats scatter, smart little goatie.

Moqui looks on with interest.