Auckland Zoo Flamingo Chicks Hatch!

Chlidonias said:
With pheasants (and also some other intensively-managed gamebirds in aviaries such as painted and brown quail) the problem stems from removing the eggs for artificial incubation generation after generation. It seems to be an accumulative effect. It doesn't help that pheasants are stupid. The same thing can be seen in some cichlids in aquariums, angelfish being especially renowned for it, where they simply eat their own eggs.

It will be interesting to see how Auckland's flamingoes deal with raising chicks in the future when none of them were parent-reared themselves.
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the bit I forgot to put in here was that with gamebirds the problem isn't so much that they can't rear their young, it is that they don't incubate the eggs. They just lay them and leave them. Painted quail just tend to lay them haphazardly around aviaries rather than in a clutch. Then they ignore them. It is a bit different from hatching the young but not looking after it.
 
Update on Facebook:

A quick update on our flamingo chicks. We're sad to tell you that the older chick's health deteriorated, and despite the intensive efforts of our keepers and vet team, we had to make the difficult decision to euthanase it. Thankfully, the younger chick is thriving and has taken its first trip to Central Lawn to get some exercise and stretch its wings! Watch video here: Auckland Zoo's flamingo chick stretches its wings - YouTube
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It looks like a very happy bird in the video, and very tame.
 
Auckland Zoo Flamingo......

Chinese Painted Quail cocks will adopt chicks straight from the incubator and rear them. Hens will not.
The egg laying without incubating used to happen with wild caught imported CPQ as well. It's a matter of them feeling secure enough to sit. Pheasants that scatter their eggs around, may behave very differently given a choice of well camouflaged nest boxes.
 
the surviving chick is in with the adults flamingoes now (I guess for some time already).
 
Any news on the chick?
Have the flamingoes reproduced again?
 
So to date the flock has produced five survivng chicks (four first generation and one second generation). Did I hear somewhere they're all male?
 
Zoofan15 said:
So to date the flock has produced five survivng chicks (four first generation and one second generation). Did I hear somewhere they're all male?
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I would suggest they are all first generation, but hatched in different years.
 
Zoofan15 said:
So to date the flock has produced five survivng chicks (four first generation and one second generation). Did I hear somewhere they're all male?
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five? There's the one from 2014, and is there not only three this year? Or did I miss one?

FBBird said:
I would suggest they are all first generation, but hatched in different years.
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one of the recent chicks is "thought to have been sired by the 2014-hatched bird" or words to that effect. It seems very unlikely given his age, pretty much dead on three years old.
 
Must be my mistake! There was indeed one chick in 2014 and three this year. For some reason, I had it in my head there was one in between. Perhaps the hatching of the first chick was announced prior to the videos of the three together which came later.

I'm guessing they made the assumption the 2014 male was the father based on him pairing with the female but perhaps another male got in there while his back was turned!
 
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