No 'Free Feeding' Allowed At Randall Oaks Zoo Starting Monday

WEST DUNDEE, IL — In an effort to provide better care for its animals, Randall Oaks Zoo will enact new rules Monday regarding how guests can feed the goats, ducks and other animals at the popular petting zoo.

For the past 60 years, guests to the petting zoo, at 1180 N. Randall Road in West Dundee, have been feeding the animals. In recent years, the zoo has had stations with feed available for purchase. At the stations, guests can fill their cups and then can feed the pellets of food to the animals.

Starting on Monday, that will change. The zoo will remove its feeders and discontinue the sale of cups of feed, according to park district officials.

And instead of the traditional feeding methods moving forward, there will be three scheduled feeding times during the day. During the feeding sessions, guests can buy a cup of food for $1, according to park district officials. On busy days, there will be a limit of two cups per person.

Sara Peters, zoo manager at Randall Oaks Zoo, said the changes were made with the animals best interests, and health, in mind.

Our Animal Care staff are always striving for best practices of animal welfare and by doing so, we need to change the method our guests will be feeding the animals," she told Patch. "We want to make sure that our animals are eating the correct amount of food, as well as making sure each individual animal is getting the proper nutrition in their diets."

The zoo's nutrition program identifies and calculates the needs of each animal based upon many different factors, including age, weight, body condition and season. And the program enacts adjustments to the animal's diets regularly based upon those factors.

"By offering free feeding from our guests, it was difficult to calculate the nutrition our animals were receiving," Peters said. "This guided feeding program that we will be offering, will be more personalized to our guest experience, while enhancing our nutrition program at the zoo."

Randall Oaks Zoo is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.