Auckland Zoo Flamingo Chicks Hatch!

zooboy28

zooboy28

Well-Known Member
Auckland Zoo has hatched two flamingo chicks, in a first breeding in Australasia, and a world-first for a completely hand-reared flock! This is an awesome achievement, and bodes well for the future of these birds in New Zealand!

Story & photo here: Auckland Zoo - Flamingo chicks a first for Australasia

Two flamingo chicks have successfully hatched at Auckland Zoo - the first chicks ever bred in Australasia, and the first time a zoo has successfully bred from an entirely hand-reared flock anywhere in the world.

What was viewed by other zoological organisations as an 'ambitious plan' has become a great success and is an important step towards ensuring the long-term sustainability of Auckland Zoo's flock.

Former exotic birds team leader, now head of capital works and infrastructure, Michael Batty has been waiting for these chicks since raising and transporting Auckland Zoo's flock of Greater flamingos to New Zealand in 2001, from the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge, England.

"No zoo has ever successfully bred from a completely hand-reared flock before. These two chicks are the first in the world. It's wonderful, we've achieved the circle of life," says Michael.

Flamingos are flock birds, but Michael says each bird develops its own personality traits and he looks forward to see what these two will be like.

Team Leader Pridelands Nat Sullivan, has been monitoring the chicks' progress since incubation.

"It is a privilege to be part of the first hatching. They're doing really well, communicating with each other which may be why the second chick is making even faster progress than the first."

As young flamingos, they lack the pink feathering for which the birds are famed. This pink plumage develops over their first three years, due to the carotenoid pigment in their diet, which is high in alpha and beta-carotene (humans eat beta-carotene when they eat carrots).

Their sex will not be determined for some time and it will be a few months before visitors can come and see them, but it will be worth the wait.
Click to expand...

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1AsXktpT8s&feature=youtu.be
 
For those that are interested, there are now photos up on the zoo's Facebook page, with one captioned as being the youngest - only two days old.

This takes the Auckland population (and the Australasian population bar 1 at Adelaide Zoo) to 8.8.2.
 
Jabiru96 said:
Great news! Are there plans for any other NZ zoos to import flamingo?
Click to expand...

Not that I know of, although they may be interested in keeping them in the future. If Auckland can breed their population up then they could supply some.

The video shows one of the chicks being fed by keepers, which makes me think they may be being hand reared.
 
Congratulation.
Finaly, there are the first chicks. Hopefuly,they are just the first of many to come in next years.
 
Excellent news, all the more so considering the size of the flock, i also believe they are pinioned too.
A brave move to attempt the import in the first place and it has paid off, well done to all involved.
Would this group be the most isolated flamingo colony in the world?
 
kiang said:
Would this group be the most isolated flamingo colony in the world?
Click to expand...

I imagine so yes, although I don't know for sure.

Although also it depends on what you define "colony" as, because if you include the two Adelaide birds, then they are the most isolated - the Auckland group is closer to a group in New Caledonia (1795 km away vs. 3225 km to Adelaide). The next closest colony to all these is probably in Indonesia.
 
Zooboy, would you know how much it cost to import and exhibit the colony at Auckland?
 
kiang said:
Zooboy, would you know how much it cost to import and exhibit the colony at Auckland?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have a clue sorry. The exhibit was built specifically for these birds, but was part of the Hippo River complex, which included exhibits for Hippo, Baboon and Flamingo initially (serval and cheetah later), and which would have cost several million dollars I imagine. I don't know how much the import would have cost.
 
well colour me amazed! This is great news. I had serious doubts that the Auckland flock would ever produce chicks. Hopefully now that they've started breeding they will keep at it in the following years!!
 
vogelcommando said:
And another article about this great event ! :
Chicks are a world first | Stuff.co.nz
Click to expand...

Hi V,

This is great news! It's interesting that the article you posted refers to 16 birds not the 20 mentioned in several other articles.

I remember when we were at the safari park and were discussing pheasants, I had no idea that they were incapable of raising there own young because they had no experiance in incubating and raising there own becuse of management practices by breeders over many generations.

I am wondering in your experience is this a risk with the NZ birds?
 
zooman said:
Hi V,

This is great news! It's interesting that the article you posted refers to 16 birds not the 20 mentioned in several other articles.

I remember when we were at the safari park and were discussing pheasants, I had no idea that they were incapable of raising there own young because they had no experiance in incubating and raising there own becuse of management practices by breeders over many generations.

I am wondering in your experience is this a risk with the NZ birds?
Click to expand...
there are currently sixteen birds at the zoo (although last time I was there I could only count 15 -- I guess one was hiding); some have died since the original importation. Off the top of my head I can't remember the details. I think one died in quarantine? One died after a visitor crippled it with thrown rocks.

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.
 
Chlidonias said:
there are currently sixteen birds at the zoo (although last time I was there I could only count 15 -- I guess one was hiding); some have died since the original importation. Off the top of my head I can't remember the details. I think one died in quarantine? One died after a visitor crippled it with thrown rocks.
Click to expand...

Well, there are 16 adult birds (8.8) and two chicks, so 18 total. Twenty chicks were imported, but two died in quarantine (one from Aspergillosis, the other from food aspiration). Since going on exhibit, two more have died (at least one from rock-throwing, possibly both died from the same event).
 
Fortunately, hand-reared flamingos won´t imprint humans as their sexual partners. They will stay tame whole life, but will mostly pair with their own kind. To hand-rear just one or two generations brings only low risk for them to lose their inborn instincts. Flamingos are long-lived and able to learn till high age, the NZ birds should do ok in the future. They might need 1-2 saisons of try-and-fail first, before they succeed.

But hand-rearing should always be seen as an exceptional solution for emergency cases. It can´t become a standart method of propagation for zoo birds, Gouldian Finches´ example is the warning. Individuals that lose their rearing instincts should be removed from the genepool, the same what would happen naturally in the wild.

There are not many ways how to enrich lives of captive flamingos. Big group and good enclosure help. But there is nothing better to keep a group active then let them incubate and bring up their own chicks.

I guess Auckland will continue with artifitial incubation and hand-rearing for next few years, in order to build up numbers quickly. Once their group comes to 30-35 birds, it is the highest time to stop with it.
 
zooboy28 said:
Well, there are 16 adult birds (8.8) and two chicks, so 18 total. Twenty chicks were imported, but two died in quarantine (one from Aspergillosis, the other from food aspiration). Since going on exhibit, two more have died (at least one from rock-throwing, possibly both died from the same event).
Click to expand...
I had thought two had died from the rock-throwing incident but when I was trying to check that last year or the year before I could only find confirmation that one had died so the death of the other remained a mystery to me. At the actual time of the incident I distinctly recalled there being two birds that died (but that may just be memory playing up).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top