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| Rhino Resource Center: Rhino Forums > Rhinos in Captivity > Diets > Produce and Vit. E |
| Posted by: cydneyp Nov 12 2007, 01:53 AM |
| I was wondering if anyone could tell me what and how much they feed their black rhinos on a daily basis for produce and vit. E? We feed banana, sweet potato, carrot, and apples. Our male also gets bread daily and 1/4 cup liquid vit E. every other day. Our female does not get bread daily and gets 1 teaspoon vit. E. every day. Also any info on brands and amounts of grain fed out and types of hay offered would help. Thank you. Cydney |
| Posted by: Rynotamer Nov 12 2007, 03:37 AM |
| Cydney, We give our rhinos (1.1) 2 tablespoons of Vit E daily in a cored apple. They take it pretty easily. Any other produce is given just as rewards for training or medical procedures and is somewhat limited as to how much given. We are now giving our rhinos a Mazuri brand herbivore diet, I can't recall the exact name at the moment, I'll have to come back to you on that. We feed a mixed hay (2nd and 3rd cutting), we have gotten away from feeding pure alfalfa. Mark |
| Posted by: Sarahk Nov 17 2007, 02:02 AM |
| Each of our 5 black rhinos get from 6-15 cc's of Vitamin E each. We give them an apple at the same time. We just squirt it in their mouths. Our two males receive biotin also. Produce is only given as a treat, enrichment, for training, to get on exhibit, etc. |
| Posted by: cydneyp Nov 18 2007, 10:20 PM |
| Thank you for your responses. If anyone knows what other facilities do, or know a good contact, could you please forward them on to me? |
| Posted by: adam Nov 20 2007, 02:29 PM |
| Columbus Zoo gives all of our Black Rhinos (3) get 6ml of Vitamin E 6ml (Emcelle Tocopherol), produce (apples and carrots) as enrichment and training. They also get 2 bananas with there phosphorus supplement. adam |
| Posted by: nyukitx Nov 27 2007, 05:34 AM |
| Cydney--we give our rhinos 5 cc of Vit. E emcelle in a cored apple every day and use produce in training as well as provide 5-8 lbs each evening scattered in their hay (as part of the diet card). We feed out an Equilene sweetfeed that seems to be a bit archaic but it's working for us so far. Adam--what is the phosphorus for? We use it on our nursing dam but not as a full time supplement. Do the boys get it too? |
| Posted by: Rynotamer Nov 28 2007, 01:50 AM |
| nyukitx, What kind of rhinos do you have? |
| Posted by: cydneyp Dec 2 2007, 01:05 AM |
| Here at Racine we have 1.1 blacks. I have continued to look into the recommended doses and we ran a chem panel on our 0.1. Our female receives about 5 cc of Vit. E (Mazuri Vitamin E TPGS, 20% Solution (5M84). This form of the vitamin in that solution provides a vitamin E potency of 77.4 IU/g) SID and she has Vit. E levels within normal limits according to published data. I have not had a chance to acquire blood from our 1.0 recently acquired from Brookfield, but he now receives 15 cc Vit E. SID (readjusted due to communication errors). |
| Posted by: CassandraS Dec 5 2007, 08:54 PM |
| Cyndney, I was just curious why you give the male so much more than the female? This string has made me revisit what we give our rhinos and why? We currently give our rhinos Vit. E and Flaxseed Oil capsules in a banana daily. We give 4000 IU of each. Does anyone else give flaxseed oil? We get our capsules from Sam's Club-where does everyone else get there Vit. E? We have been giving them this so long, I'm not sure anyone knows exactly why anymore, so I would be interested to know anyone's input as to whether we're wasting our time with these supplements. |
| Posted by: cydneyp Dec 6 2007, 08:09 PM |
| Cassandra, Since my last posting, I cross referenced the diet information that our male came to us with. There was an error with the data provided and we have since reduced the vit E to 15 cc SID (Mazuri brand Vitamin E TPGS 20% solution 5M84) But I'm still curious as to how the doses for the animals are calculated (i.e. trial and error with blood chem panels, a "make up" in the difference needed and what is available in diets). Anyone who knows how their facilities came up with the doses of vit E for their rhinos, could you please forward that to me? |
| Posted by: CassandraS Dec 6 2007, 10:19 PM |
| Cydney, Thanks for responding. I did some online research, and am talking with our vet and tech to decide if we should change what we're currently giving. I know that we went to the info sheets on the Mazuri website for their Vit. E products, and they gave a dosage according to the weight of the animal. How they came up with the proper dosage, I couldn't tell you. I'm wondering if anyone really knows. Our zoo's vet tech just sent out an e-mail to Michelle Miller(Disney's DVM) who is supposed to know about black rhinos-so maybe she will give some insight as to the questions we all seem to have. |
| Posted by: Sarahk Dec 8 2007, 03:59 AM |
| We get our Vitamin E from Mazuri. It comes in a plastic bottle. It may be worth it to check on getting that instead of using caps everyday. Two of our females and one of our males get 15 cc Vit E everyday. One male gets 10 cc and one female gets 6 cc (she's 3 years old). |
| Posted by: adam Dec 8 2007, 12:34 PM |
| In Columbus, our guestimated dosage was based on their weight. We also took blood for several weeks after we started to check their vitamin e levels became normal, which they have. adam |
| Posted by: adam Dec 9 2007, 10:25 AM |
| What I meant to say is we checked their vitamin E levels to see if the levels normalized. After several weeks their levels did seem to become more normal. adam |
| Posted by: CassandraS Jul 22 2008, 07:03 PM |
| Hey everybody, The discussion continues........ We decided to switch from the capsules we were giving to Emcelle (sold by Mazuri). Before we switched, we drew blood on our adults and their levels were much lower than they should be. Normal levels, from what we have read, should be 1-3, and ours were .3 and .5. We gave the Emcelle liquid Vit. E orally for one month at dosages that were recommended according to their weight(5.75cc and 6cc). Then we tested their blood again, but the levels still had not risen to within normal ranges. Now we are confused, and wondering what to do next. Should we wait a while and test blood again, or raise the dosage? From what I could get from the replies, Columbus and Racine said they have tested blood levels and they are normal. Has anyone else tested blood levels? |
| Posted by: StephanieR Jul 23 2008, 01:28 AM |
| Hey Cassandra, We test our blood levels here, at Kansas City Zoo, on our black rhinos. The doses we give are based on calculations done by our vet based on the results of the blood work. We redo the calculations every 1-2 years or when needed. We have 3 rhinos on 15cc, 1 on 6cc, and 1 on 10cc of liquid vit. E. These are not based on their weights, as the rhino that gets 10cc is actually one of the heaviest. I'm not sure if you should change the dosage yet or not, but I hope the above info. helps somewhat. Stephanie |
| Posted by: StephanieR Jul 27 2008, 02:16 PM |
| Cassandra, I talked to our vet the other day. The info he gave me that may help you is that we retest our rhino's blood levels after 30 days of being on a new dose. The blood is drawn about 1 hour after they have received their daily dose. I hope this helps you. Stephanie |