Where’s Marty? At the Maryland Zoo Kitchen where food for animals is prepared

Hello everyone!

“Where’s Marty?” Our “Coolest Places To Take You In 2022” week continues today with a stop at the kitchen at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

Now, I would like to stop here and say a few words to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

And here’s why.

My first visit to the aquarium kitchen led to a visit to the zoo store.

Feeding fish and mammals in the National Aquarium is no easy task.

But a trip to the Maryland Zoo revealed that the challenges were even greater.

For example, some animals can catch COVID from food exposed to the virus.

Imagine processing it for over a year.

The point here is that we would never have considered going to the zoo if the aquarium hadn’t hosted us.

At a later date, we will revisit the Gems, Baltimore’s National Aquarium.

It costs about $50,000 a day to run the zoo, much of it for food.

I asked President and CEO Kirby Fowler if he noticed the “elephant in the room” (no pun intended) was a food problem when he got to work.

He said he hasn’t been working in the kitchen for a week just to take care of it.

About 1,500 animals are fed daily, but not all at once.

Some eat early, some late, and some eat more than twice a day.

And the nutrition in each serving has to be accurate.

When I went to the store to buy a bag of carrots, I was assured that it wasn’t this big, or that the carrots themselves were this big.

Overall, it’s interesting how the zoo is fed and if you watch the video, I don’t think you’ll ever see zoo animals the same way again.

Tomorrow our next destination is sometimes a lot of shards of glass.

See you!

Marty B!