The employees of the Stichting Dierenparken Helmond have their hands in their hair. Several animals get sick because strangers are constantly throwing prepared food over the fence. Varying from smoked sausage to sushi. In the nick of time, a pregnant alpaca and her foal could be prevented from dying.
“It is really unbelievable”, animal caretaker Kim van Zanten sighs. “Just throw your old food scraps in the free organic waste bin, which is in the garden of many houses, and only give suitable food! This saves our animals.”
It is particularly striking in the park on the Rijpelberg. Chairman Maarten Koolen of the Helmond Zoo Foundation is also despondent by the situation. “We don’t know exactly how to solve this either. We can put up more information boards, but the question is whether this can be solved with that, because it seems that people are doing this with malicious intent.”
“We almost lost two animals.”
Six months ago, something similar happened at the Hortensia Park, which the foundation manages. There a deer died after eating thrown plastic. To Maarten’s relief, no animals have died yet. However, a veterinarian had to be called in several times because animals had become ill from the discarded food.
As a result, veterinary costs are now skyrocketing. According to Maarten, it concerns hundreds of euros. “You have to have someone come every time an animal gets sick. And if an animal has diarrhea, antibiotics must be given.”
Recently, a Scottish highlander and one of the alpacas, among others, became ill. “Fortunately, we were able to save it. The alpaca had something in its esophagus. By acting quickly, the vet was able to prevent worse. Fortunately, our animal caretakers are very alert, because this animal was also pregnant. Otherwise we might both have the animals lost. It did lead to a spontaneous delivery, but we were also able to save the foal.”
“It secretly entails quite a bit.”
“The mother has been on medication for a week and a half,” adds animal caretaker Kim. “The baby alpaca hung on the plasma. It had to get extra food. Secretly it all means quite a bit.”
According to Maarten, the foal is now doing a little better. “But we always have to wait and see how things go. At first it was difficult to get this animal to drink. We had to do this with the bottle the first time, but now it seems to be going in the right direction.”
“You can’t stand here all day like a police officer.”
According to Maarten, all recent events have made the zookeepers even more alert to finding prepared food that ends up on the animals’ grounds.
“The only thing we can do is make sure that people in the area are aware of this and are also aware of this,” he explains. “Ultimately you need the eyes of the people who visit the park every day, because you can’t stand here all day like a police officer. That is impossible. We see this as a bit of a collective responsibility. We do it here something nice for the neighborhood. We hope that the neighborhood will take care of this and hope that this will be a summer incident.”
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