The nonprofit Zoological Society, which has been managing the Sacramento Zoo for several years through contract with the city of Sacramento, has provided another example of why the arrangement is good for the Zoo, and the region, through the completion of the new vet hospital.
This is the type of arrangement we are calling for to manage the Parkway, and the same scale of enhancements could occur there that are now happening at the Zoo.
New hospital for zoo critters -- take a look
By M.S. Enkoji - Bee Staff Writer Published 12:00 am PST Friday, November 10, 2006
If you have ever wondered where chimpanzees in the zoo go when they're feeling a little under the weather or where snow leopards with a toothache are treated, the Sacramento Zoo is offering a look-see.
The zoo's new $2.5 million hospital will be open today and Sunday, giving a rare public look at state-of-the-art veterinary technology.
Zoo vets once processed X-ray film in a converted bathroom and used other makeshift buildings to care for the 500 inhabitants of the Land Park zoo, said Mary Healy, the zoo's director.
The new 5,000 square-foot hospital was built partly from private donations and partly with city bond money. It offers new technology such as digital X-ray machines, which provide instant images that can be easily e-mailed to outside consulting vets.
Aquatic animals can paddle around a 10-foot-wide wading pool while they wait to see the vet. The brawniest orangutan won't be able to electrocute himself by fooling around with the reinforced light fixtures during those boring quarantine days.
The zoo hospital will be called the Dr. Murray E. Fowler Veterinary Hospital. A former zoo veterinarian, Fowler wrote the first textbook on zoo animal medicine during the 1960s while a professor at the University of California, Davis.
