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Revolutionizing Zoo Nutrition with Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  We've talked in the past about using hydroponics to produce animal feed,
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  like livestock for things like fodder production, grass production,
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  and said that it's used commercially for this.
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  And I thought I'd do an episode on using hydroponics for helping animals in zoos.
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  So using hydroponics in a zoo type scenario
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  so there's a number of different advantages for
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  this and it could improve animal welfare animal care
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  animal for animal nutrition and this that's why a number of zoos produce crops
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  hydroponically the other reason is that you can get all year round production
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  and some animals eat a lot of plant material so examples include cincinnati
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  zoo and botanical gardens.
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  That's a good link up there because you've got the botanists and the zoologists in one place.
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  Famous for the giraffe, the gorilla that got killed, wasn't it?
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  Was it Harambe, something like that?
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  Cincinnati is also where we make gold leaf. So yeah,
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  good place to grow hydroponically in a zoo you've
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  got all those botanists great fertilizer and hungry
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  animals and they have two hydroponic
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  container farms or shipping containers but they
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  grow leafy greens and mainly lettuce and kale for
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  their giraffes their manatees their elephants and hippos
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  and more so that's interesting they can
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  produce over 10 000 pounds what's that
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  that's 5 000 kilos five tons well that's
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  how much they've produced since their launch since their launched it
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  and that's roughly 200 300 pounds or 150
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  kilos a week and their goal is for
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  internal efficiency supply chain resilience odor free
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  feed that's interesting carbon reduction and
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  emergency preparedness so that's interesting you know if if food production
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  food is has to be prioritized for humans if there's an emergency then obviously
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  the zoos are going to suffer any of these examples obviously some of them will
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  be out of date and not up to date so just bear with me on that.
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  For example, Peyton Zoo in the UK, that had a hydroponic lab established in 2008.
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  So that was really early on. That was in the greenhouse and that was a verticrop system.
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  So the plants moved around the system rather than the water. That was interesting.
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  And there had stacks and stacks of leafy greens, high density,
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  and it was both an educational and a conservation tool.
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  And that was hoped it would reduce feed costs, offer nutrient rich diets and
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  serve as a live demonstration of sustainable urban farming however the hydroponic
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  system closed down and they converted back to soil cultivation at Paynton so that's disappointing.
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  Philadelphia Zoo they were one of the pioneers in zoo-based hydroponics as well
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  and they have ship a container vertical farms called the crop box where they grow microgreens,
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  arugula, is that coriander, mustard greens again Again, about 150 kilos a month
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  feeding approximately 20 animal species.
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  So that's interesting. The shipping container option obviously is great for
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  cost, but doesn't look great from a visitor's perspective.
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  And so something like paintings, I'd say is probably a better system because
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  you can get people in and then looking at the system.
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  And if the plants are moving around, it looks cool as well. That's probably
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  the coolest system I've ever seen for hydroponics.
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  Certainly up there with the Dyson strawberries on a Ferris wheel sort of system.
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  Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado, they deployed
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  a shipping container vertical hydroponic system to grow
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  lettuce particularly romaine lettuce for their giraffes and
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  they had automatic lights water nutrition control a basic hydroponic setup
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  so there are a number of examples of
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  zoos using it you know you got some very fussy animals
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  there that don't want standard veg
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  coming straight from the supermarket and they're
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  just colossal amounts all year round and they're going
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  to need consistency so they don't care if you
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  know a certain vegetable is not particularly seasonal
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  at a certain time of the year they need consistency for their animals for their
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  health to maintain them so freshness matters same day harvest ensures full nutrients
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  and vibrant flavor they know that they know their demands so they can manage
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  everything it's not like they have to be on the whim of people and like you
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  know in shops when somebody like martha stewart has a cooking show or in the UK,
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  Nangella Lawson, as soon as they have a recipe, then suddenly the demands for,
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  celeriac or rhubarb goes through the roof.
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  And so supermarkets have to adapt. In a zoo, you know what your animals are
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  going to want every day. So you can plan around that.
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  Obviously the efficiency on water use in certain situations is going to help.
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  And there's not going to be a lot of soil around for cultivation.
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  All the soil is going to be trampled by the animals.
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  Biosecurity, making sure they're free of pathogens like E. coli,
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  salmonella they can't just go to the vet and ask for the sort of antibiotics
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  that we would get here if you had a like a salmonella outbreak,
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  and the resilience prevention of supply chain disruption for weather,
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  global recalls, things like this.
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  And then the big one is education. And you could allow people to look at food
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  security, and you can build that into the zoo's educational remits,
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  because that's a big, you know, conservation is a big remit of a zoo, but so is education.
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  So often they, you know, they
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  justify themselves on those two things so shipping
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  containers are the most commonly used hydroponic farms on
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  zoos but i think the the vertical crop
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  system something automated something that moves around
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  is probably better from an educational perspective because anything
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  that kids on school trips like to see things moving they don't just like to
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  stand at stare at plants in a shipping container so yeah i think that's probably
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  covered everything there is to know about growing hydroponic in a zoo i I think
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  shipping containers have the other advantage that they're easy to scale.
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  You just add another container next door or on top, whereas a greenhouse requires
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  planning permission and things like this.
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  It's not just a novelty, it's a powerful tool for animal nutrition,
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  visitor education, and potentially resilient food systems.
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  That's been Zoos. If you grow hydroponically in a zoo, let me know.
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  I'd love to come and see your system.
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  I'm Dr. Russell Sharp, the inventor of gold leaf fertilizer,
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  as it's known in the US or liquid gold and loads of other products in the UK
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  we have a number of you know high value specialist inputs for hydroponics and
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  sports turf and other sectors,
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  if you're interested in collaborating on an episode if you've got something
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  interesting to note about hydroponics you've got a new fancy widget or system
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  or you're utilizing hydroponics in an interesting way then please do get in
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  touch and I'd love to talk further about that with you and feature it on an
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  episode of Hydroponics Daily.
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  Until tomorrow, thank you for listening. Goodbye.