LEGO Zoo #0007: Pig Petting Corral

I had this week's playset built over a week and a half ago, but I've been behind on photographing and posting it due to other obligations.  For this set we've moved over to the LEGO Petting Zoo for the first installment:  the pig petting corral.

Domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) are omnivores that will feed on just about anything.  They tend to be social and seek out mud wallows in which to congregate and cool down their body temperature.  Hayley, who is making full use of the enclosure's mud wallow, is a Duroc pig, a very friendly breed that has distinctive reddish-brown skin:

Twiglet is a Guinea hog, a dark-colored breed with roots in west Africa:

Brickton is an American Yorkshire, one of the most common commercial breeds in the Midwestern US:

All three of these breeds originate in the United States, so their night-house is modeled in a classic American "red barn" style:

Barns like this usually have sliding doors rather than hinged doors, so I tried to match that mechanism in this playset.  It took some wrangling, but I was able to get both doors to slide smoothly, using parts from the LEGO Technic series:

Sliding doors are nice, but to really see the interior of the barn, it's easiest to remove the roof:

The inside is divided into two parts:  a staff area, and the main pen for the pigs.

Here you can find the pigs' feed and water trough.  While pigs will chow down on a lot of different things, they need to have a balanced diet of grains, grasses, and supplemental pellets.

The water trough can be refilled from the plumbing system that runs along one side of the barn:

The staff area contains additional tools, mostly for cleaning up after the pigs:

The two areas are separated by a gate that can be opened once the pigs have been moved out into the yard:

The keeper in charge of this area is Jason, who is currently busy moving fresh hay into the barn:

This enclosure has a few additional features, mainly because it's intended not just for animal display but for human contact as well.  Brightly-colored brushes hung along the fence can be used by visitors to brush animals and still keep their hands clean:

Many contact yards permit visitors to wander around freely inside the enclosures, which can sometimes be stressful for the animals on display.  This yard is modeled after the Once Upon a Farm area at the Memphis Zoo, which keeps visitors out of the enclosures and allows animals to freely approach the fence if they want to be petted.  This is a lot safer for people and a lot less stressful for animals.  Low fences allow visitors to easily reach in if an animal happens to be near the perimeter.  Here, Jim is lifting his daughter Anna so she can reach Brickton over the fence:

It looks as though the fence might not be quite low enough.

Animals and Minifigures:
pigs (3), Anna, Jim, Jason

Created with LEGO Digital Designer

LEGO Zoo #0006: Hamburger Stand

More food this week;  we'll get to some healthier stuff later, but for the moment let's fill up on a zoo cafe staple -- hamburgers.  A lot of zoos convert old animal houses that are no longer suitable for habitation into concession buildings, so cafes and food stands sometimes have much older architectural styles than the exhibits around them.  I envisioned this hamburger stand with Georgian architecture, which would fit with older zoo themes:

You may have noticed the hinges in the photo above.  As with previous sets, I've included moving parts for a reason:

You can remove the roof and rotate the two halves away from each other to reveal the interior of the shop:

Let's start our tour of the shop at the back, where Seth is busy at the grill:

 

 

Immediately to Seth's right is the cash register, where Annalise enters new orders:

Above the cash register is the monitor that displays the orders as they come in:

 The drawers of the cash register do actually function, so I decided to add some extra props:

To Annalise's right is the drink machine:

Last of all, opposite to the grill, is the sink and all of the additional utensils:

I also made a couple of shaded tables of different sizes:

Put all of these together with some stylish planters, and you have a decent little eating area:

Of course, if you add the dessert carts from two weeks ago, you're bordering on a full-fledged food court:

Minifigures:
 Seth, Annalise

Created with LEGO Digital Designer

LEGO Zoo #0005: Flamingo Pool

This week's design features my first animal not conveniently pre-manufactured by LEGO.  The problem with building anything lifelike out of LEGO pieces is that you inevitably lose some level of detail and end up with something that looks like it's from the mind of Dr. Eggman.  I've got several manufactured animals in backlog, but I thought this one looked good enough to go ahead with a full enclosure.  Hopefully you can recognize it:

The Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis) can be found along the Andes mountain range and across much of southern South America.  They are a popular species in zoos worldwide for their tolerance of a broad range of habitats and climates.  In the LEGO Zoo, our breeding pair of flamingos lives in a marshy enclosure with shallow, muddy pool, just they way they like it:

Your may recognize the recurring rockwork frame that I've used already as the basis for the turtle terrarium and raven flight cage.  Here it makes good backdrop for a small water feature:

Flamingos lay a single egg at a time on a mud nest.  Letting the pool have a natural muddy substrate allows the flamingos to display their natural behavior.  Here the female watches over her chick-to-be:

Flamingos are filter feeders with specialized beaks for filtering food out of water..  In the wild they feed on algae and small crustaceans that are high in beta carotenoid pigments.  These pigments give the birds their characteristic color.  In zoos flamingos are fed nutritious pellets that contain pigment supplements.  The flamingos will mix the pellets with water to make them easier to swallow:

A raised viewing platform gives zoo visitors a better view into the enclosure:

One of the advantages of using the freeform mode in this design program is that you can used combinations of bricks and colors that LEGO would never actually manufacture, for example these transparent plates.  They do allow for some interesting angles; just think of this as being underwater.

As with my previous sets, this one is made up of a series of interchangeable parts.  Expect some of these to show up again in later sets.

The advantage of interlocking parts is that they can be recombined with other sets, as seen here with the reptile terraria from a few weeks ago:

A bigger enclosure also means more space for a bigger flock:

Trivia from recent news:  The oldest flamingo on record recently died at the Adelaide Zoo, leaving only one flamingo on the entire continent of Australia.

Animals and Minifigures:
Carlos, Chilean flamingos (2)

Created with LEGO Digital Designer