- SeaWorld’s animal care staff feeds roughly 400,000 pounds of Romaine lettuce related to the successful rescue and rehabilitation manatee program.
- SeaWorld receives a truckload with approximately 20-30 thousand pounds of fish every Wednesday morning. The variety of restaurant-quality fish includes: mackerel, squid, herring, white bait, silversides, sardines, krill, capelin, clams, shrimp and salmon.
- Once the fish is thawed it is kept on ice and must be fed out within a 24-hour period. The typical grocery store keeps fish on ice for up to a week or 10 days so we’re not joking when we say it’s fresh!
- SeaWorld feeds out approximately 4,000 pounds of fish every day, 1,000 of which is fed to the killer whales.
- The five Asian elephants at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay each eat 250-300 pounds of food daily. That includes 1 1/2-2 bales of hay, 5 gallons of a special elephant diet, 80 pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables, plenty of browse, including oak branches, banana trees, palm fronds, bamboo, sugarcane or hibiscus, and occasionally some sweet feed, such as popcorn, Jell-O, Gatorade, popsicles and even Skittles. Some food even gets a schmear of peanut butter, molasses or honey. Whew!
- The Bengal tigers at Busch Gardens eat upward of 8 pounds of meat each day. In summer months, the tigers enjoy cool blood popsicles, wasting no part of their daily diet.
Source – SeaWorld Blog