...fortunately the zoo residents are not that "greedy". Nevertheless, special feed, minerals and vitamin supplements can be really expensive. In order to offer a deeper look behind the scenes of a zoological institution, we have developed the food sponsorships!
With a food sponsorship, you can support us in ongoing operations. The maintenance sponsorships are exemplary. We ensure you that your sponsorship donations will be used 100% for the benefit of our animals.
Then write an E-Mail to patenschaften@tierpark-goerlitz.de and we will get in touch with you.
Of course, a monetary donation and a sponsorship contribution is still possible by transferring it to our donation account at the Sparkasse, but this may take a little longer to process.
Please fill out our online form to issue the sponsorship documents.
The red panda, also known as the small panda, is an omnivore that feeds mainly on bamboo. However, since bamboo is very poor in nutrients and the red panda's digestion is not ideally equipped for it, it must consume large amounts of it to meet its nutritional needs. From time to time it also preys on small mammals, birds and their eggs as well as large insects. In addition, fruits, berries, acorns, grasses and roots serve as important food sources.
Since we grow the required bamboo of around 500g of fresh leaves per animal and day at the zoo and a nearby nursery, this only has an impact on the costs in cultivation, care and maintenance as well as harvest. Furthermore, each of our pandas receives 150 grams of fruit and 350g of vegetables every day, as well as 100g of "panda cake" specially tailored to the nutritional needs of the red panda, consisting of 50g pellets for leaf eaters and a mineral supplement.
Food for a Red Panda: from 45€
These representatives of the South American marmoset family, which weigh only around 500g, eat only around 85g of food a day, but their feeding plan is quite special: outdoors, they feed primarily on insects, wild fruits and tree saps. In order to meet these food requirements, the kobolds, which are highly endangered in their distribution area, receive from us: vegetables, a small amount of fruit, various insects, boiled eggs and ready-made feed specially produced for this group of animals, which perfectly cover the primates' nutritional requirements, but are also quite expensive. There is also "gum", a crystallized resin extracted from acacia trees, which in warm water produces a honey-like substance. Spread on wood or injected into holes, it not only ensures physiological food intake, but also excellent employment for the animals.
Food for two golden-headed lion monkeys: from 5€
Our European otters need around 3 kg of food every day in winter. Their energy requirement is higher in winter because the low ambient temperatures need more energy to maintain bodily functions. The playful, likeable european otter is a pure carnivore, i.e. meat eater, but it does not live exclusively on fish. In the wild, what can be caught is eaten: in addition to fish and amphibians, this includes waterfowl up to the size of swans and mammals.
At the zoo, the repertoire of feed animals extends to fish, chickens, pigeons, chicks, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats and mice. The rodents and birds are bred in the zoo itself. This is complex and costly, but it ensures a supply of fresh and proper feed animals. The feed fish must be bought in large quantities. That's about 1500kg a year.
Food for two otters: from 7€
The enclosure in the entrance area of the zoo, which was completed in spring 2020, is home to our lively banded mongooses. The origin of these small predators lies in East and Southern Africa. Therefore, our animals prefer the spacious indoor facility instead of the innovatively designed spacious outdoor facility, in the winter. This does not detract from the animal experience. A large panorama window grants our visitors exclusive insights into the private life of these little felines.
A banded mongoose eats around 100g of food a day. In their areas of origin, the animals live mainly on insects, invertebrates, vertebrates, berries and eggs. With us they get a colorful range of different feeds: fish, chicks, pigeon, chicken, rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, raw/boiled eggs, dry and wet cat food, sheer meat, fruit and vegetables, nuts, special insectivore ready food, dried and live insects such as mealworms, crickets, beetles, hermetic larvae. The insect feeds in particular are quite expensive.
Food for a group of banded mongooses: from 13€
Our rhesus monkey group already has a decent appetite. While they're not particularly picky about what's on the table, it's supposed to meet their nutritional needs. Each monkey eats around 400g of vegetables, special primate pellets, eggs, insects, seeds, dry cat food and germ grains a day. By the way, fruit is taboo. Although the primates live on fruit in their areas of origin, these are wild fruits whose sugar content is comparable to that of our vegetables. The fruit that we love to eat is cultivated for human taste and consumption and contains a lot of sugar, which can quickly lead to obesity in the monkeys, especially the older ones.
Food for a rhesus monkey: from 8€
Can they or can't they? Shoot with their spikes, I mean... Yes, they can, but only in extremely stressful situations, because once the "ammunition" has been used up, it cannot simply be reloaded. New "shooting spikes" have to be formed over a longer period of time. By the way, like our toenails and fingernails or our hair, spines are made of keratin. The organism absorbs the components through food. Even if they are called porcupines, they have nothing to do with pigs. Porcupines are rodents and almost exclusively vegetarian.
For each of our porcupines we calculate about 800g of food per day. This consists of: special herbivore pellets, vegetables, lettuce, nuts, dry cat food, grain and seed mixtures. There are also fresh branches, leaves and grass.
Food for a porcupine: from 14€
Big camels like the one-humped dromedaries and the two-humped bactrian camels are survival artists. Adapted to their meager habitats, they get by with very nutrient-poor feed. They stock up for bad times. Their stores are the bumps where fat is stocked. The animals feed on this fat or energy depot when food is scarce. Large camels can also survive without water for a long time, but then they drink up to 120 liters within just a few minutes! The main food of the bactrian camels in our zoo is straw and hay, mineral salts and herbivore pellets. We calculate around 5 kg of straw, 5 kg of hay and 1 kg of pellets per adult animal.
Food for a Bactrian camel: from 28€
We are proud of our strong group of sensitive Asian antelopes! Seven cubs were raised in 2020. Two of them by hand, as they were born outdoors on a cold, wet night and were more dead than alive when the keepers found them the next day. Heat lamps and warm milk subsitutes made the two feel better quickly. As selective ruminants, our persian gazelles eat about 200g herbivore pellets, 150g alfalfa pellets, 2nd cut hay and dried alfalfa for any intake per day, as well as fresh leaves in summer, frozen or dried leaves in winter, which the animal keepers store accordingly in summer. During the growing season there is also fresh grass every day!
Food for a persian gazelle: from 16€
The "Zoo Animal of the Year 2020" is a true gourmet. Although each bird only needs about 100g of food per day, the sensitive softbills depend on special food. The name of this special diet is T16. These low-iron "beo pearls" cover the birds' nutrient requirements without burdening their organism with too much iron. Like many other tropical inhabitants, beos in human care often suffer from the diet-related iron storage disease, which can also lead to the death of these animals. In addition, our Beos eat a mixture of dried grain-of-insects, eggs, carrots and fat-rich food, fruit, vegetables, live insects such as mealworms, soldier fly maggots or crickets plus a vitamin supplement twice a week.
Since the number of the charismatic hill mynas both in its Southeast Asian regions of origin and in captivity has decreased dramatically in recent decades, the linguistically gifted bird was voted "Zoo Animal of the Year" for 2020 (zootierdesjahres.de).
Food for a hill myna: from 7€
Well camouflaged in the wild on the arctic tundra with their white plumage, snow owls prefer to eat small mammals such as mice and lemmings. However, they can also capture larger animals like rabbits or ducks. Unlike most owls, snow owls hunt not only at night but also during the day.
At least since Harry Potter, the snow owl is not only better known, but also more popular. For this reason, our snow owl must be called "Hedwig". Each snow owl eats about 4-6 mice a day, optionally also chicks, guinea pigs, rabbits, pigeons or rats. These animals are bred in the zoo itself. This is complex and costly, but it ensures a supply of fresh and proper feed animals.
feed mice for snow owls: from 7€
They belong to the group of the largest and most colorful parrots of all: the macaws!
Green-winged macaws have been living with us for many years and recently an "inherited" flightless blue and yellow macaw lady joined them. After many years without conspecifics, the blue and yellow macaw lady finds it difficult to get along with them. The macaws live in permanent visual and beak contact, but a direct encounter only takes place under observation and with a maximum of 3 birds.
Each of our macaws gets about 50g of vegetables/fruit and 50g of a commercial seed mixture for large parrots, which contains sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, oats, hemp, rose hips, mung beans, milocorn, buckwheat seeds, etc. a day. As a special treat, they get whole walnuts or hazelnuts, as an activity every now and then. Not too much, of course, because nuts contain a lot of fat!
food for a macaw: from 14€
Things are turbulent in "Qishan", the walk-in enclosure for visitors for various feathered and fur-covered inhabitants of central China. However, the colorful and decibel-intensive flock of Chinese parakeets is the most dominant species at the aviary. About 25 of the attractive little parrots populate the enclosure right now. In comparison to many other parrots, the male and female derbyan parakeets can be distinguished at a glance: the adult males have a vigorously red beak, the females a black one. This is called sexual dimorphism. Like most parrots, derbyan parakeet live primarily on various seeds. Fruit, vegetables and nuts expand the menu. The flock eats around 1 kg of mixed parakeet-feed and 700 g of fruit and vegetables a day.
Food for a flock of derbyan parakeets: froom 6€
Vultures are important health cops! Thanks to their extremely good eyesight, the vultures, circling high in the air, can spot dead animals from many kilometers away. Vultures live exclusively on carrion. In this way, they ensure that diseases cannot spread through dead animals. Since the number of vultures in India has decreased dramatically due to painkillers used in veterinary medicine, rabies, among other things, has been on the rise again.
Our griffon vulture pair and their offspring eat about two 20kg piglets per week. The piglets are born and raised at our zoo. At 2 months they are killed quickly and without stress and immediately fed to the vultures. What sounds heartless is essential for good animal feeding. We know what we feed our pigs, especially what we don't feed them - namely various medicines. Our pigs live with their mother in a group until they die and have access to fresh air. In addition, we save the reared pigs a stressful transport to a slaughterhouse. Incidentally, this also makes us independent of the purchase of meat from industrial livestock farming. Nevertheless, rearing piglets is time-consuming and expensive.
Piglets for griffon vultures: from 90€
Autumn is rutting time for ibexes. It is a great experience to watch the mighty bucks fight: two opponents get up on their hind legs, fall forward and their up to one meter long horns collide generating bang that can be heard from far away. These ruminants, which were once almost extinct in the Alps, live mainly on mountain meadow grass and herbs. Real gourmets! We offer them top-quality hay and dried alfalfa for optional eating. In summer there is also fresh herbage, leaves and branches. In addition, each female receives 250g of herbivore pellets and 150g of alfalfa pellets, the much heavier males receive double the amount.
Food for one heavy ibex: from 4,50€
What color is a yak? The wild yak, which is acutely threatened with extinction, is purely black. If you visit the Central Asian high plateau, however, you will find a wide range of different colors. A phenomenon of domestication. Our group of yaks is also a motley mix. There are almost white, mottle gray, black, dark mottled gray and black and white yaks. These shaggy inhabitants of Central Asian alpine regions are pure grazers. However, they have a fairly high mineral requirement. With us, the adult cows receive around 6 kg of hay and 600 g of herbivore pellets per capita and day, and the bulls, being about a third heavier, receive 1 kg of pellets and 10 kg of hay. In summer there is fresh herbage ad libitum.
Food for a female domestic yak: from 4€
Kangaroos are Australia's cows. Originally there were no large herbivores in Australia, but there were the vast grasslands. Accordingly, grass-eating animals have developed: the kangaroos! Interestingly, kangaroos have evolved a digestive system of chambered stomachs similar to that of modern ruminants. This phenomenon is called convergent development. Our adult females receive around 200g of herbivore pellets and 200g of special macropod, i.e. kangaroo, pellets per day. The male animals, which are about a third larger and heavier, receive 400g of pellets. We additionaly offer 2nd cut hay and dried alfalfa ad libitum. In summer there is also fresh herbage and leafy branches.
Food for a male kangaroo: from 21€
A camel without a hump, does that exist? Yes, of course, there are even four versions! In South America there are two wild and two domestic forms. The vicunas living in the South American Andes are the ancestral form of the alpacas. Bred primarily for their soft fleece, alpacas are now more popular in zoos for their friendly nature than their larger relatives, the llamas, of which the guanacos are ancestral. In the wild, the humpless representatives of the camelids live mainly on grass, herbs and leaves.
Each alpaca in our zoo receives 200g herbivore pellets and approximately 2kg hay per day. In the summer, the hay is replaced with fresh herbage.
food for an alpaca: from 7€
Red cattle and old German black pied cattle have one thing in common: they belong to severely endangered breeds of domestic animals. Old domestic animal breeds are more resilient and hardy than the modern high-performance breeds. That´s an important reason to keep it as a "genetic resource". Each one of our cows gets about 10kg of hay per day. In summer they get herbage instead; they only get herbivore pellets when they have a calf to suckle. Since our cows are good feed converters, they sometimes have to go on a diet. Then there is only straw, which the animals acknowledge with persistent mooing.
Food for a cow: from 21€
As stubborn and stupid as a donkey... is this statement correct? No! Donkeys only behave appropriatly for their species. While the horse, as an inhabitant of the steppe, sprints away at a full gallop when there is danger, the donkey, as an inhabitant of rocky areas, has to act a little more deliberately, otherwise there is a risk of falling. For this reason, the donkey evaluates a situation before acting. So they are actually really smart... Our sharp pair of donkeys and their foal are very frugal boarders. Each animal eats around 5kg of hay or straw a day. In summer there is herbage. Since donkeys get by with fairly nutrient-poor food, we have to be careful that the animals don't get too fat. Accordingly, hay or grass is replaced by straw. However, it is important to give them an adequate supply of minerals.
Food for a donkey: from 14€
For animals that are used to visitors, “lockdown” can definitely lead to boredom. The people who pet, groom, feed and with whom the animals can interact are missing. Even in "normal times" the animal keepers make sure that the everyday life of the zoo animals is enriched with innovative employment offers. But right now animal employment is even more important than in non-Covid times... Food balls are particularly popular with zoo residents. The food balls only have one hole, through which some food falls out from time to time when the balls are rotated. This keeps our animals busy for a very long time during the "visitor-free" period.
Food balls for zoo inhabitants: from 16€
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In addition, and upon request, we would be happy to issue you with a donation receipt. Please let us know your complete address so that we can issue and send you a donation receipt.
