We tend to think of February Half Term as the start of our main season here at the zoo as it has Easter close on its heels then Whit Week - then before you can blink it’s the main summer holidays.

Don’t forget residents of Barrow Borough Council can get 50 per cent off admission throughout the year by showing your Barrow Borough Council Tax Bill to our admissions team on arrival.

It’s been a busy week here preparing for half term but first, a team-building tale of enrichment. Members of the keeping, maintenance and office teams joined in for an evening of creativity – producing items to enrich the enclosures and lives of our furry, scaled and feathered residents.

From climbing walls for Red Pandas, to handing treat holders for giraffes, to barrel feeders for bears to paper mache smash-eggs for primates we all had lots of fun building and creating items that will entertain and enhance the animal’s lives.

Enrichment can be fun and entertaining for the animals, it can promote natural behaviours and it can also be practical – for Joaoa the Giant Anteater, we know Joaoa is an enthusiastic eater and always knocks his lunch clean out of the bowl resulting in two issues, extra cleaning needed in his house but more importantly it makes it harder to be sure Joao has eaten all his food and to monitor his eating habits. So, we set about making a solid structure to contain his food dishes, we then drilled holes to allow him to snuffle the food out of; the structure is both practical (it stops him knocking his food bowls over), promotes natural behaviours (snuffling his food as he would do to get to ants in the wild) and lets us monitor the amount of food he is eating.

Finally, Saturday saw the opening of our immersive walkthrough Meerkat Enclosure based in our Africa House so the little guys and gals feel right at home. Visitors are enjoying watching the meerkats scurry through the perspex tunnels under their feet.