The zoo procures snakes, rats, lizards and a host of other live and dead animals to take care of the dietary needs of the vast menagerie that includes 23 tigers.

Atul, the lion at the Nehru Zoological Park, digs into a piece of boneless beef. It is feed time, and the spread for the feline includes 6 kg boneless beef and 1 kg with bones. That’s not all that he gets to savour – he consumes 250 gram liver, which serves as a B-complex supplement, topped up with 250 gm of spleen and kidney laced with calcium. This is the daily diet of Atul.

Atul’s diet has a few surprises. The zoo procures snakes, rats, lizards and a host of other live and dead animals to take care of the dietary needs of the vast menagerie that includes 23 tigers and another 23 lions.

With an annual budget of Rs.4.25 crore earmarked for the feed of animals, reptiles and birds, the zoo has a wide and varied menu that caters to differing taste buds. The daily feed brought into the zoo also includes 100 kg each of chicken and fish, apart from a host of grains, fruits and vegetables. Just to cater to the carnivores, mini vans unload 300 kg of boneless beef and 10 kg with bones every day, while 300 kg of cattle feed is brought in for the herbivores.

According to the veterinary staff at the zoo, the giraffe gets 3.50 kg of apples, 2 kg carrot, 5 kg bananas, and 20 kg peepal leaves, apart from a mix of tomatoes, cabbages, sweet potatoes, and onions, with jaggery serving as the dessert.

“Daily, we also get 97 kg of dead fish for water birds such as pelicans and herons, apart from 6 kg of live fish for Mugger, Gharial and others,” said the zoo assistant director (veterinary), Dr. M.A. Hakeem.

While parrots, macaws and cockatoos are provided with 10 grams of red chilli and 50 gm of sunflower seeds, eagles and kites are fed with 500 gm of minced meat and a day-old chick. In the reptile section, python and King Cobra do not savour their meal daily, but get a live chicken and a rat snake once a week.

Wondering about the daily menu of primates? “The chimpanzee is provided with half a litre milk in forenoon and afternoon, as well as a boiled egg, bread, honey, jam and half a litre of papaya or pineapple juice,” Dr. Hakeem said.

“The monthly budget for feed of our animals, birds and reptiles is more than Rs.30 lakh and we have a budget of around Rs.4.25 crores per year for the purpose,” the zoo curator, Gopi Ravi, said.