Taking care of animals is the key to Planet Zoo. Without happy animals, your guests will become unhappy, you'll start losing money, and you'll attract protesters which will cause guests to be even more unhappy. Low welfare can also cause animals to become sick and/or die.
Keeping animals cared for is no easy task. Even with an army of keepers and vets at your command, there are a number of things that only you can control in order to keep your animals happy. How can you tell everything that needs to be done and what does it all mean?
Habitat Animals
For a broad view of your animal welfare, you can use your animal welfare heat map. Any red or yellow animals need attending to. You can also check the animal tab of the zoo menu and check the welfare bar. But what exactly do these low faring animals need?
Clicking on each animal will open their information panel. Almost every item on the panel attributes to an animal's welfare. I will go through each one so you will know how to find what's wrong and how to fix it.
Nutrition
Nourishment: This is how hungry your animal is. If this is at 0%, your animal hasn't eaten. Check your food dishes and food enrichment. If they are empty, it's time to call a keeper.
Last Meal Quality: You can change the quality of food by clicking on the habitat and going to the animal tab. You will need to research an animal to increase the food quality. Each level will increase the feeding cost so use this wisely.
Hydration: This is how thirsty your animal is. If this is 0%, your animal may not have water available. I almost exclusively place the water pipe so that keepers will not need to feed it. Animals will also drink from water sources such as rivers or ponds.
Last Drink Cleanliness: If you are using a natural water feature as your water source, you will need to make sure the water is clean. You can check to see if the water is clean by using the water heat map or also the habitat cleanliness heat map. If your water is dirty, you need to place a water treatment center to clean it. If you have one, it may be broken in which case you need to call a mechanic.
A couple notes on nutrition because I see these questions asked all the time. Keepers will only place enough food in the habitat to feed all the animals for a year. Keepers will only feed animals if they are hungry. If they walk in a habitat, look around, and walk out without going to prepare food, it is because the animals aren't hungry. Keepers will fill enrichment items before regular food dishes. If the enrichment items hold enough food for all the animals, they will not fill the regular food dishes. If there is not enough space in enrichment and regular food items to feed all the animals, the keepers will place the food needed on the ground. If you find your animals are often hungry, it could be caused by a number of things: more animals in the habitat than when the keeper placed food, keeper hut and staff room too far from the habitat, or not enough keepers.
Social
Social Group: The social group involves how many animals are in the habitat. The number of animals that get along will depend on the species. You can check the social tab to see if the animals are happy with their group. You can also check to see the Zoopedia to see ratios of male to female.
Space: Space is made up of anywhere from 1 to 3 components depending on species. All animals will have a minimum space requirement for their habitat. This amount increases at a small percentage for each animal added. Some animals will also require water or climbing space such as hippopotamus or mandrills. You can check the space requirements in the Zoopedia as well as on the terrain tab of the animal panel. If you find that you are not meeting the requirements when you should be (this happens especially with water), check your traversable area heat map. There may be a section of the habitat the animal can't reach. This most commonly happens with hippos and water. Since hippos can't swim and instead walk on the bottom of the water, the water can't be too deep and there needs to be a nice gradual slope going into it.
Stress: Stress is the trickiest of the animal welfare components in my opinion. Some animals that are more shy will be stressed when they are in the view of guests. There are few things to do to minimize stress. The first is to make sure you have enough shelter. You can check the terrain tab to see if the hard shelter requirement is met. It is important to make sure guests cannot see into the shelter. Another thing is to have only selected viewing areas. Instead of guests being able to see the animals all around the habitat, use a mixture of an opaque barrier with windows or glass, (to see what barriers are opaque, check out my entry on barriers here). For added effect, use one-way glass for your glass and windows. Finally, use do not disturb signs where guests gather along barriers. These do really work to help the stress level of your animals. I have also heard that placing ambient speakers help, however I have not found this to work myself.
Habitat
Cleanliness: Habitat cleanliness can be affected by rotten food, dirty water, and of course poo. You can check the habitat heat map and select habitat cleanliness to see any problem areas. For water, you may be missing or have a broken water treatment facility. For the others, you will want to call a keeper and check for any work zone issues.
Temperature: By checking the zoopedia, you can see an animal's preferred temperature
range. Depending on what biome you selected for your zoo and what animal you are using, you may need to use heaters or coolers to
meet these requirements. If
you have heaters and coolers placed and are still getting temperature notifications, check the temperature heat map and look for any areas that might not be covered. If the other welfare categories are high, the temperature usually won't have a great effect as long as the variation doesn't last too long.
Terrain: Each animal has their own terrain preferences. You can find these under the terrain tab of the animal panel. Each type has a range and as long as you are within the range, you can alter your terrain however you want. You can click on each terrain from this tab to paint with terrain or click on the terrain tab on the bottom.
Plants: Much like Terrain, space, and temperature, animals have plants they prefer as well. The environment tab on the animal panel will show the continent and biome the animal comes from which will indicate the plants they will enjoy. The plants bar is a combination of the coverage bar and type used. The coverage bar is the amount of coverage provided by the plants used. I will do a future entry on plant usage and how to make the most of this. For purposes of this entry, if animals are unhappy with their plants, check whether their coverage is too high (too many plants used) or if the wrong types of plants were used.
Hard Shelter: Most animals will require a shelter. You can find this requirement on the terrain tab of the animal panel. You can make hard shelters out of terrain, rocks, construction
pieces, etc. Elevated paths can even count toward your hard shelter percentage. If you have placed a shelter and it is not counting for your animals, check to make sure that it is large enough for your animals to enter. You may need to increase the amount of shelter as your animal populations increase. Not enough shelters can also contribute to your animals stress.
Enrichment
Species Food and Toy Enrichment: The enrichment tab holds the information for both the species food and species food enrichment. You will need to research the animals to unlock these items. Animal will require a certain amount of each.
Each food enrichment item will hold a certain amount of food. Placing enough food enrichment to meet the requirements will mean not needing additional food bowls. Animals will not lose interest in their food enrichment items.
Each toy enrichment item will have a percentage assigned to it also. Both the toy and the food enrichment requirements will increase as your populations increase. Unlike the food enrichment, your animals will lose interest in their toy enrichment over time. It is best to put in only what you need and not put them all in at once so that you can rotate other items in later on. If all other welfare items are good, the depreciation of toys will not have a tremendous effect on the welfare, but if there are other issues, they can add up quickly.
Exhibit Animals
Exhibit Animals have many of the same needs as habitat animals, however they are handled a little differently. Exhibit animals will not show up on heat maps so you will need to check on them more frequently. It is a little easier to check on exhibits as you can check on the welfare of the whole exhibit at once by clicking on the exhibit itself.
Nutrition: Just like habitat animals, zookeepers will provide food and water to your exhibit animals, however they can carry food for up to 5 exhibits at a time. If you are frequently getting notifications that your exhibit animals are hungry or thirsty, check the number of animals as they can have a lot of babies in between feedings.
Social Group: Most exhibit animals will do well in groups of 1 or 2. They reproduce rapidly
which can be a great money maker, however it requires careful attention to keep removing excess animals. The notifications for exhibit animals don't seem as efficient of notifying of overcrowding.
Exhibit: The exhibit animals' needs for their homes include layout, cleanliness, temperature, and humidity. Layout items will need to be researched. Each animal has 3 different items with 3 different options to choose from. One option for each item will get layout to 100% but feel free to add as much as you want. Keepers will clean the exhibits the same as habitats. Temperature and humidity will need to be set per exhibit species. Each has a slider that you will move within the desired range.
If you've made it this far, you should be able to diagnose your animal welfare issues. Please let me know of any tips you may have found in the comments and don't forget to follow @mamazooana on twitter for blog updates.
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