00:00Hello and welcome to our mini-series about Edinburgh Zoo.
00:10In each episode, we'll meet a different species and speak to their keepers about what a typical
00:14working day is like for them.
00:17In this episode, we'll be meeting Kabid, an adorable eight-year-old rhino who moved
00:21to the zoo six years ago.
00:24There we met his keeper, Katrina, who has looked after Kabid for the last year.
00:28And on her arrival, the gentle giant was enjoying his breakfast.
00:32Kabid's got a really great character, actually.
00:37He is very friendly.
00:38We call him the big gentle giant because he's large and he's very strong, and you wouldn't
00:43want to be in with him because he could accidentally squash you, but he is a very sweet rhino.
00:50He's got a lot of personality.
00:54He's quite fun.
00:55He likes to play with things.
00:57So his favourite thing is putting a bucket on his head and running about his enclosure.
01:02He does get the zoomies sometimes, so you can imagine a two-and-a-half-ton rhino running
01:07about the paddock.
01:11You wouldn't want to be in the paddock with him.
01:13We've got a mud wallow for him over the back, which he loves to roll about in and get absolutely
01:17caked in mud, and obviously likes being in his pool as well.
01:21He occasionally plays with these balls, so he's got big heavy metal balls that he'll
01:26run about with.
01:27Because he is still quite a young rhino, so obviously he is still quite playful.
01:33So yeah, he's a really nice animal to work with.
01:35A normal day is lots of cleaning, lots of shoveling up rhino poo because he eats a lot,
01:42so obviously a lot comes out the other end as well.
01:44So that's how we typically spend our morning, is mostly just cleaning.
01:48We like to get that done and out of the way in the morning.
01:51We clean his pool twice a week, so I drain that, clean that up, and then we hose everything
01:57down, give everything a good scrub so it's nice and clean, fill up his water troughs
02:01if we need them done.
02:03We also give him his breakfast in the morning, so he's currently down in the bottom paddock
02:07and that's where he gets his breakfast.
02:09His breakfast and his dinner consists of some browser pellets, and he gets a whole cabbage,
02:15a whole white cabbage, and he gets usually between four and six carrots as well.
02:21The browser pellets are weighed out, so we know exactly what he's getting.
02:24His hay is more kind of ad-lib, he just gets as and when, and we just top up his hay heck
02:30whenever he wants because he's allowed to get as much hay as he wants basically.
02:35And working with Kabit, it's not something Katrina takes for granted.
02:40Getting to be up that close to a rhino is pretty amazing.
02:44Obviously as a keeper, we like to build their trust and stuff, so we make sure he's used
02:50to us touching his face and things like that.
02:53For being able to do health checks and stuff, it's really important that he's comfortable
02:57around us, so it's just amazing to be able to do that and to be able to touch a one-horned
03:04rhino is not something a lot of people have done in their life.
03:08It's just great to be around him and provide him a good life basically until he goes off
03:12and hopefully has babies and helps the population and stuff.
03:17Join us next time when we'll be visiting the penguins and learning about how keepers
03:21at the zoo care for the animals.
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