Zoo-licious

If you think your home pantry is well-stocked, consider the thousands of pounds of food that the Hogle Zoo keeps on hand to feed its 900-plus animals.

Besides fruits, veggies and eggs, there are such dubious delicacies as ground horse meat, frozen whole rabbits and baby mice. Although some of these items may not tickle human taste buds, they satisfy the dinner call of the wild.

The zoo's annual food budget is more than $110,000 per year, according to the zoo's marketing director, Brad Parkin. Its shopping list includes roughly 80 tons of hay, 10,000 pounds of fish, 6,000 pounds of monkey chow, as well as hundreds of pounds of bird seed, tens of thousands of crickets and more than a million mealworms. And don't forget the myriad fruit flies raised on the premises for reptiles.

The commissary on the zoo grounds has no stove — these meals don't need any cooking. A walk-in fridge is lined with apples, fish and eggs; two-walk-in freezers hold the frozen whole animals, such as mice and rabbits, which are individually sealed in plastic by companies that specialize in zoo food. Storeroom shelves are stocked with biscuits similar to dog chow. But they're much more expensive, because each variety is designed for a specific type of animal. (There are five kinds of biscuits just for the different types of monkeys.)

While humans can run to the grocery store when they're out of milk or bread, it's not so easy for zoos to access some of the cuisine they serve. "We've got to plan carefully on meat and fish, because there are some things we can't get locally," said Liz Larsen, animal care supervisor.

"We also have a hay barn and grain silos, and we have to coordinate with local farmers to get through the winter."

The koala bears, a special summer exhibit, required eucalyptus leaves that had to be specially flown in, said Stacey Phillips, the zoo's spokeswoman.

A meatpacking plant in Nebraska makes a "canine diet" product of ground horse meat that's fed to the bears and wolves. The felines get a similar horse-meat product that contains a little more protein and fat, said Larsen.

The Chacoan peccaries from South America, acquired by the zoo in July, get yams one day and carrots the next. The penguins get six to nine fish a day.

Elephants get about 75 pounds of grass hay daily (about 1 1/2 bales each) plus 35 pounds of produce. No, they don't get peanuts — "They're too fattening," said Nancy Carpenter, who as Hogle Zoo's veterinarian, designs the animals' diets.