Our Animal Hospital

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Welcome to Potter Park Zoo's Veterinary Clinic. Formerly the building where our education animals were kept (they now have a new facility in our Education Center), the building was renovated in 2002 to be our on-site hospital for animals. This was only possible because of a generous grant from the Rotary Club of Lansing, and for that, we are extremely grateful. After all, this is where our zoo animals who have any special health needs are cared for and where their physicals are done.

We have a main treatment area, where we can perform physical exams on animals with the assistance of a gas anesthesia machine. We can monitor animals under anesthesia with many devices that are similar to what you might see at a hospital, including a stethoscope and a machine to determine how much oxygen is in the blood.

We have a microscope (on a generous loan to us from Sparrow Hospital) to perform exams for parasites, or to look at the animals' blood. We also have two rooms that can be used to house sick animals, or animals in quarantine (usually a minimum 30-day period during which we determine an animal's health before it goes out on exhibit). These two rooms also have their own fenced-in, outdoor yards.

When you stop by the zoo, go to the farmyard encounters area to look into the window of one of our clinic's animal rooms, as well as the treatment room, and you might see something interesting going on!

--Dr. Tara Myers Harrison