How do zookeepers go about feeding the animals?

They typically feed the big cats by putting raw horse meat, sprinkled with bone meal, in an empty enclosure. Leave the enclosure and then let the cat in. Although some of these cats act like house cats and want you to scratch their necks or try to rub their heads against the keepers through a fence, it is not a good idea to be in the same enclosure with them.

With the exception of the Reptiles, all other animals, including the big cats, are fed once per day.

The dangerous ones, like the big cats and bears, or monkeys and apes, are fed within their night enclosures, and the food is put there after the enclosure has been cleaned and re-locked. When the animal comes in in the evening, it has access to it's food.

In the past, the large predators were fed horse meat, but today they are given a large sausage of mixed animal parts, including bones, hair, and vitamins. This is closer to the kind of food they would get in the wild, instead of just the meat muscle of horse meat. Even though this is better food, it has it's problems as well. For example, since the sausage is soft, there is not the tearing and chewing necessary when they ate a dead animal, so the predator develops tooth and gum problems as a result.

As an X-Zookeeper I can tell you that the proper food is only one of the problems with captive animals. It's the captivity itself that is bad and often creates incredible problems with these wild animals. Their place is in the wild, NOT in a cage or moated yard.

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