The TLDR of this post: I'm wondering how other shelters calculate their daily shelter capacity as I feel our current system does not accurately portray our open kennel space for incoming animals.
One of my duties is to calculate our kennel capacity to send out to various departments so it is known how many animals we have and what open space we have for incoming animals. I did not create the system for calculating this and something that has always bothered me is that open stray kennels and open adopt kennels carry the same weight capacity wise, and while I understand that part of the reasoning for this is that we technically could move unavailable animals into those spaces if we need to. However, if we are having to move animals into adoption early because we are running out of space in the back, that signifies to me that we are at pretty critical capacity and it is difficult to accurately communicate that information to other departments because we may have 30 open kennels in adoption and only 5 in our stray areas so it looks like our percentage of available kennels for incoming animals is much lower than it actually is. Something our capacity calculations also doesn't consider is the number of animals in our kennel cough/URI isolation kennels. While we do include them in our email, they have no impact on the actual calculations. I think it would make more sense to have some sort of report that shows how many animals are cleared from isolation and would need to moved into our general population. I feel that most people don't look at the actual break down of space that we provide and just look at the capacity percentage. It also would be beneficial in my mind to have a separate capacity for our isolation areas so we can more easily identify when we have a concerningly high number of animals with kennel cough or URI.
#AdmissionsandIntake(includingIntake-to-placement)#DataandTechnology#OrganizationalManagement------------------------------
Laurel Wilton
Feline Welfare Supervisor
Nebraska Humane Society
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