News and Stories

At the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, our animal friends love eating their leafy greens. With around 50 species of animals whose diets rely on browse (leafy treetops) living at the zoo, coordinating production, storage, and distribution of this green cuisine is no easy job; luckily, browsing is a breeze for animals at the zoo when we leaf it to Cincinnati Zoo’s Browse Coordinator, Patrick Gainer.

As one of the few Zoo Browse Coordinators out there, Patrick sets the standard high through the management of nearly 15,000 trees on the Cincinnati Zoo’s Bowyer Farm property across 8.11 acres, packing of nearly 300,000 pounds of browse annually, and specialized distribution to Zoo animal departments based on their unique needs and preferences.

Helping Hands in Loads Push Cincinnati Zoo Towards Goals: The Quest Towards 9,000 lbs. of Boxed Browse Every Summer!

This browse operation is in full swing at the Cincinnati Zoo’s Bowyer Farm, with Patrick leading the charge towards a goal of forty-seven 15-pound bundles of browse a week, along with three-hundred 30-pound boxes of frozen browse packed every year in the summer for use during cooler months.

Browse needs to be frozen and preserved during the warmer months so that in the winter, zoo animals can still reap the benefits in our frigid Ohio climate. Reaching that goal has been made possible through Patrick’s coordination and the packing help of Bowyer Farm full-time, seasonal, and volunteer staff working against the clock, with numbers of boxes packed for the winter increasing year after year.

Nature Heals: Browse as a Veterinary Remedy

Patrick’s experience with horticulture and culinary background proves essential in his mission towards catering to the needs of animals across the zoo, oftentimes with varying needs and preferences. (He notes that the kangaroos are quite picky.) Patrick’s dedication to his browse bulletin system tracks department preferences across the zoo and ensures that animals get what they need and aims to give the pickier animals what they’d like.

There are 3 kinds of willow, birch, elm, sweet gum, ash, mulberry and hackberry under cultivation at the farm, and we also harvest willow, sycamore, mulberry, dogwood and cottonwood from the wild.

Apart from preference, certain types of browse can also be prescribed to animals by veterinarians to help remedy health issues.

• Certain folivores like the Coquerel sifaka lemur rely on browse to stay healthy and keep their gastrointestinal tracts functioning properly. The browse team freezes 100 vacuum sealed bags of winged sumac each year for the sifaka.
• Elephants go through 6 sets of molar teeth in their lifespan, so when stubborn teeth prevent new ones from coming in, thick pieces of plant stems known as chonkers act as teethers