Diary Entry - March

The building work has been long and hard going. The biggest challenge for the staff has been man-management. Getting a job for every pupil and keeping all pupils on task has been hard going. The build has required a vast array of skills, knowledge and equipment. A very serious stumbling block has been the health and safety issues of a build this complicated. The majority of the students being in years 7 and 8 are not allowed to use the larger power tools and the older students can only do so under strict supervision. As a result the build didn’t progress through March as fast as we had hoped.

We had aimed to have the building work finished at the end of February to take the feeders down to the zoo for the beginning of March. The build took two weeks longer than planned and required many hours of work after school from the staff as well as many of the students. The finishing touches were applied to the toys the day before they were due to go down to the zoo. On the 11th of February, Mr. Aspden drove the four feeders down to Chester Zoo to be met by Mary Lhebier (a member of the zoo research staff) and the zoo’s primate keepers.

The next step for the feeders was to have the zoo staff review and evaluate the finished products for their suitability and safety for use with the mandrills. The first impressions from the zoo staff have been promising as they were initially impressed by the size of the feeders not having realised that a school project would produce feeders of such scale and quality. The two rotational feeders are similar to previous designs of the keepers so the keepers feel there will be no major issues with those. The two rope pull feeders are a different story. Having changed the designs slightly to have the food fall out inside the container and have the mandrills fish the food out from the inside we had to drill holes into the side panels of the cable drums. This has unfortunately given access points to the cable drums where the mandrills would be able to rip open the softer wood and get into the drums. This is far too dangerous as the mandrills could potentially hurt themselves on the moving parts. As a result the zoo staff have asked us to come up with a suitable solution to the challenge.

This fits in with our “industrial-style” approach to the project and will allow the students to troubleshoot the problem and come up with a suitable solution. The solution will then be put forward to the zoo staff and an appropriate compromise will be put in place to prevent the mandrills from doing themselves any harm as this is obviously number 1 priority for both our project outcomes and the zoo staff themselves. Back at school the students will have a brainstorming session to come up with suitable drawings and designs of solutions that we can then email the zoo and they can choose their preferred solution.

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