Sitlington Animal Park Tour - Part #3: Zoo (First Section)

This is the third part of a series of posts touring Sitlington Animal Park, my low budget British zoo built on the side of a farm.

I'm going to split the zoo tour into three parts since it would take me forever to get through it all in one post. This part will feature the flamingos, Petting Barn, meerkats, porcupines, binturongs, otters, gibbons and the Reptile House.

 

Since this is a smaller, lower budget type of zoo, the zoo entrance is just a window on the side of the gift shop. I've seen similar at a lot of other small zoos, including most recently at Filey Bird Garden & Animal Park. I added some cups of animal feed to imply that guests can feed select animals, like the domestics but also some more exotic animals like the wallabies.

 

The first habitat you come across is a large grassy paddock for Hill Radnor sheep. A lot of smaller zoos start out with rare breeds, so let's say these guys were among the first animals kept by the zoo, before the arrival of exotics. If they're not in the field, you can probably find them in the Petting Barn, which we'll visit very soon.

The first habitat I built was this octagonal American flamingo aviary (although it was originally for greater flamingos) and it's still one of my favourites. The roof was easily one of the most tedious things I've ever built but I'm happy with the end result. The habitat has a shallow pond for them to wade in and I've added a few aquatic plants to entice insects for them to eat. The land area is a mixture of sand and gravel, with some grass for extra comfort. You can see the birds through three big viewing windows, as well as a mesh fence. Keepers can get in via an airlock door on the side and there's decorative planting around the edges, as well as a small tree overlooking the pond. The building at the back is their housing, which is fully on show.

Inside, I kept it quite basic to fit the low budget style, but there's a concrete floor covered in rubber tiles (Steam Workshop item) just to make it more comfortable as I know, in real life, they can suffer from foot problems if kept purely on hard floors. Of course, there's a little pool in the middle, right in front of the viewing windows, which I gave rounded edges just to make it safer. There's tiles on the walls and a hose pipe to help with cleaning, and I added skylights and a row of small windows to bring in natural sunlight.

 

The path then splits in two directions but we'll follow it left towards the Petting Barn. This is where all the zoo's domestics are kept, starting with a small rectangular habitat for Sussex chickens. These are older chickens that have outlived their egg laying days, so instead of being slaughtered, like at most farms, I gave them a habitat to live out the rest of their days instead. Looking at it now, I could have added a small gate to let them roam the sheep paddock, as I know they're sometimes used for pest control by eating parasites in their manure, and of course it would give them more space to roam.

 

You might also notice a fair few peacocks on the tour and that's because I added them all around the zoo to imply they're free-roaming. A lot of zoos have free-roaming peacocks and the sounds of their calls always brings back fond memories of zoo visits.

 

Opposite the chickens, I've built a paddock for a small herd of alpine goats. These are just a small portion of the goats kept at the park, as around 30 more are kept on the farm to be milked behind the scenes. The paddock is super basic — just a square of dirt, with a few tyres, rocks and platforms to climb — but goat enclosures typically are quite basic, even at higher budget zoos. Sadly, as you probably guessed, a lot of the climbing furniture isn't actually climbable.

 

The barn exterior was inspired by the many barns I see around Yorkshire. They all have this open-slat wooden boarding around the side, called Yorkshire boarding, which I thought was fitting for a Yorkshire-based zoo. The open slats help with ventilation and there's also a small gap in the roof that helps with that as well. I made the sign using the animal sign pieces and a font I downloaded from the Steam Workshop.

 

The inside was mostly my own design, although the pens were semi-inspired by Blackpool Zoo. In here, you can find pens for the sheep, goats and lambs, as well as pens for alpacas, donkeys and highland cattle. The pens are mostly identical and connected, which I guess would allow keepers to rotate the animals if needed. The cattle needed an extension around the side just to accommodate the size of the herd. I spent a long time in here adding layers of detail, from the custom feeders right down to the custom poo (yes, you read correctly). The cables for the lighting can be traced back to a fuse box and the barn's water supply is provided by rainwater harvesting tanks around the back. Of course, this is where guests would be able to pet and feed animals, so I added an area where they can wash their hands.

 

We'll see the outdoor habitats for the donkeys and cattle in a later post but first let's head back outside to see some more habitats, starting with the customary meerkat habitat. Every small, low budget zoo has meerkats and here they're kept alongside a pair of African crested porcupines. I've given them a low-walled enclosure, with a few viewing windows so they can be seen at ground level. I've also added a pile of rocks and some logs which, if this was real-life, they could sit on for an elevated view. I've also given them a natural substrate for digging, and for the porcupines, a few logs and stumps to gnaw. For some reason, the meerkats always stay at the back whilst the porcupines stay at the front, but the whole habitat is fully traversable. I've given them a generic African mud hut facade for their housing, since they're a common feature in a lot of real meerkat habitats, and I guess it's better than a bare concrete building.

 

Next up is one of the newer habitats and it belongs to one of the park's two binturongs. I wanted it to be slightly raised in the air, so the animal can be seen over the walls from a distance. The walls are quite tall but I've added a few windows so shorter people can see. Inside, I've added a natural climbing frame and given them access to a live tree, which is kept away from the barriers to prevent escape. As we all know, binturongs are great climbers so their habitat is surrounded by hotwire. Another design feature I added was a cross view to the gibbons, which you can sometimes see swinging in the background. I thought this would make sense since the two species share a common range in the wild. As mentioned, this is one of two binturongs; there's actually a breeding pair at the park but the other is living separately for now and we'll be seeing them soon!

The next habitat belongs to a small herd of alpacas, which we last saw in the Petting Barn. I've given them a small field to use throughout the summer, as well as a separate hardstanding in the winter (since the grass would be turned to mud otherwise). This is another basic grass paddock but I feel it's accurate to what you'd see at a low budget zoo in real-life.

 

Also, since touching a lot of the animals is encouraged, and petting zoos can be a breeding ground for germs, I thought it was important to make some hand washing stations which I've dotted all around the zoo.

From here, you can get a nice view of the Reptile House but there's two more habitats to see first.

 

As briefly hinted at in the last post, one of the zoo's newest arrivals is a pair of lar gibbons. This is a species you might associate more with bigger, higher budget zoos but I've seen them at smaller, lower budget ones as well, such as Hamerton Zoo Park and the Lake District Wildlife Park, so I feel they fit here. Lore-wise, I guess it's a sign the zoo is growing after its acquisition by Apex Zoos. I kept it lower budget by giving them a wooden cage, made out of cheaper building materials like wood and breeze block. There's two viewing windows at the front, which I've placed low down so you're either looking up at the animals or seeing them at ground-level. Of course, there's lots of rope for them to climb, which I tried to intertwine and overlap in some places to add some complexity. These are suspended quite high, giving the gibbons a great view all around. For landscaping, I gave them a grassy terrace, some sand and a few tropical-looking plants around the edges. One thing I overlooked was shelter but they do have access to their indoor quarters (off-show) so that's good enough for now. For keepers, there's a big service door around the side, which is big enough for any maintenance vehicles to get in, if needed.

Beside the gibbons is a habitat for another Asian species, the Asian small-clawed otter. This is also where you can find the park's second binturong. Hamerton Zoo Park gave me some inspiration for this habitat as it keeps both species in a very similar setup. The two species can separate themselves if needed, with the binturongs on a network of branches, which lead to a live tree, and the otters down below in a large natural pond fed by a waterfall. I made the habitat green and lush with lots of grass, bushes and trees, which help conceal the ugly wall at the back. I've given each species their own housing, with the otters living in a stone shed on the ground and the binturong in a raised house, inaccessible to the otters.

Finally, let's take a look at the Reptile House which can be found inside a stone structure that's meant to look like some sort of converted farm building, maybe stables or an old barn. The interior was inspired by Lake District Wildlife Park, specifically the green brick work and black trims around the exhibits. I detailed it with plumbing, light switches and I even tried my hand at a font piece fire exit sign. I added some canvases for decoration, which I like to pretend were donated by a local art class.

 

 

As for animals, you can find exhibits for axolotls, crested newts, Hermann's tortoise, boa constrictors, skinks and fire salamanders — all super common at zoos like this. Since the exhibit boxes are so big and many of these species are so small, I gave the exhibits a false back just to provide the illusion that they're smaller. Sometimes it works but sometimes the game spawns the animals behind them or halfway through them, but I can live with that.

 

It's not all exhibits either, there's also a habitat for spectacled caiman. I gave it a big underwater viewing window, so you can see above and below the waterline, as well as a small land area with a custom UV light, some rocks and plants. Since it's fully indoors, I wanted to bring in some natural sunlight by adding two big skylights. Keepers can get in through a small door, which is meant to open in two halves, so the keepers can open the top half to see in before they safely enter.

 

Here's some overhead shots of what we've seen today:

 

That's all for today's installment! In the next post, we'll be exploring the rest of the zoo, seeing (among others) the wallabies, camels, zebras, ostriches and food court.