Pairi Daiza the worlds first!!!

forumbully

forumbully

Well-Known Member
YES! It's a fact!

the worlds first ever shoebill born in captivity!
at Parc Paradisio in Belgium!!!

I reported earlier that the eggs were infertile.
this was told to me by the staff. literature states that incubation lasts for 30 days. after this period the eggs were candled (also before) but no proof of viability.

staff kept them in the incubator and the day before yesterday the first egg showed cracks. yesterday I got the news the chick had hatched and emerged fully from the egg.
 
This really was the holy grail of captive bird breeding, i wonder what was the spur to get the birds mating successfully, are they free flying or pinioned?
What is their enclosure like?
Or could it be as simple as 2 birds that simply "liked" each other?
There will be a lot of envious zoo people around the world looking on, all we can hope for now is the successful rearing of the chick.
 
the zoo originally imported 4 animals: 1 pair and 2 younger birds that turned out to be males.

the initial mate of the female died shortly after arriving.
I'm not sure how exactly they did it, but I believe she had the possibility to choose her new mate herself.

they have a rather big aviary with lots of plants and water. the inside enclosure can be divided into 2. this is believed to have triggered this set of matings. last year they were together all year round and started mating in the fall. no eggs were produced.

I looked it up: we have no overview of the aviary online, but you can look here for some pics of the animals. including matings, flight and the nest.
Schoenbekooievaar - ZooWiki scroll down to see the thumbnails

if I do find an aviary overview, I'll post it, but that means going through several hundred paradisio pictures :eek:
 
the little one has been called "Abu"
here are a few official pictures

schoenbek.jpg
 
Great photos, the chick looks really well and heres hoping "Abu" grows into a strong healthy bird, well done to all at Parc Paradisio.
 
This is great news, almost as good as if someone announced they'd bred a baby Dinosaur...

The photos show the pair are obviously living in pretty natural conditions- I'm sure been full-winged has something to do with it too.

Hopefully they'll go on to breed again and maybe rear their own young in time.
 
Just of interest: which zoos keep full-winged shoebills and which pinioned ones?

I written already, that long-legged birds have great problems mating when one wing is clipped, and this may be the reason why shoebills never bred before.
 
GReat News, but I'm surprised, the are don't feed the chick with a handpuppet, as they do it in california with the calfifornian condors, to avoid that the chicks feels like a human, you know what I mean, i don't know the english word. Thats the main problem with all of the shoebills in zoos, they came as very young birds into the zoos and don't breed, because they try to mate with humans...So the same will happen with this bird.

Nevertheless, its a wonderful success, and I hope, they will have a parents rearing as soon as possible.

Thanks for the phantastic pictures, forumbully !
 
Zebraduiker said:
GReat News, but I'm surprised, the are don't feed the chick with a handpuppet, as they do it in california with the calfifornian condors, to avoid that the chicks feels like a human, you know what I mean, i don't know the english word. Thats the main problem with all of the shoebills in zoos, they came as very young birds into the zoos and don't breed, because they try to mate with humans...So the same will happen with this bird.
Click to expand...

Imprinting i think is the word you are looking for.

I think the staff at Parc Paradisio have been taken by surprise here, they probably didn't think the egg would hatch
 
the second chick hatched today!
this one had some more difficulty and was exhausted.

it will be reared and monitored separately for a few days. if it's strong enough, they will be kept together, this diminishes the risk of imprinting.
(paradisio uses this technique on birds of prey too and apparently they breed normally afterwards)

as an extra bonus, the female shoebill is really busy on the nest, so chances are that another egg(s) will be laid...
 
Its like the old British saying "you wait ages for one bus and two come along at the same time".
The news coming out of Belgium at the moment is getting better and better
 
kiang said:
Imprinting i think is the word you are looking for.

I think the staff at Parc Paradisio have been taken by surprise here, they probably didn't think the egg would hatch
Click to expand...

Hopefully someone is busy making a Shoebill-like dummy to feed the chicks...

Does anyone know where and when this rearing technique was first adopted? I saw it being used by the Dept of Conservation with handraised Takahe chicks in New Zealand circa 1990.
 
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