Hunter Valley Zoo Hunter Valley Zoo News

Some fantastic news. Hunter Valley Zoo has welcomed the birth of a Red-rumped Agouti! From their Facebook page:
Our common Agouti (Adam and Ange) recently welcomed a single pup into their family

Enjoy this video of our Agouti family enjoying some food with a little surprise visitor

Common agouti are very important to the rainforests of South America as they often burry seed and nuts for later however then forgetting about them and helping new plants grow
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Hunter Valley Zoo has announced the birth of a male Black-handed Spider Monkey. The baby who was named Tito is currently being handraised and was born back in April. The full detailed story about the baby and his mother Cara is below:
WARNING cuteness overload ahead

Just one of the many things that happens behind the scenes at Hunter valley zoo is hand raising baby animals, this can be just like having a newborn baby.

Hunter Valley Zoos primate keepers would like to introduce “Tito” the baby Spider monkey

And here is Tito’s story
(while it may be long it’s definitely worth a read to understand how and why primate keepers came to be hand raising Tito)


Tito was born between the early hours of the 29th April 2020; his mother “Cara” had experienced two pregnancies prior to Tito’s. The first pregnancy occurred in 2018 (the first Spider Monkey pregnancy at HVZ) which unfortunately ended in the loss of her baby due to her inexperience and fear as she dropped her baby just after giving birth. The zoo family were utterly heartbroken but held high hopes she would succeed as a mother in the future.

Cara’s second pregnancy was in early 2019, after she had observed two births from other females ‘Betty’ and ‘Jan’ who had successfully reared their young throughout the previous months. Unfortunately, she gave birth late one night and the keepers found the baby unresponsive during the morning rounds the next day.

After these unsuccessful pregnancies, we spoke to the species coordinator who believed we could give her one more chance at successfully birthing following the move into the new Spider Monkey Island enclosure. Keepers were nervous and excited to record a slight baby belly on Cara in December of 2019. On April 28th of 2020, the Spider Island moat was due to be emptied and cleaned, all of the spider monkeys were locked into dens while the water was drained overnight...

Early the next morning on Wednesday the 29th of April, primate keepers went to check on the spider family after the night in their dens; unexpectedly a baby was found on the ground in one of the dens. Ideas started pumping through Hunter Valley Zoo-Keeper’s brains to figure out how to get Cara to pick up her baby before it got too cold and didn’t want to suckle. All family members were separated from Cara as well as the resident mum “Jan” and her new baby. We then all monitored very closely as Cara went down and sat next to the baby. She showed little interest in grabbing or touching the bub. We contemplated sedating Cara and placing the baby on her chest, but it became clear that the cons out weighed the pros in this circumstance.

Despite repeated efforts and strategies, at 12pm the hard decision was made to take the baby from the dens before he became too cold and dehydrated. He was immediately put on a stuffed animal toy, wrapped up and warmed with a hot water bottle.

Many phone calls were made to the species coordinator as well as some vets and keepers from another facility, who had successfully raised and reintroduced a baby Spider Monkey before. We were given the green light to attempt to hand raise the baby in order to save the genetics of the young, as Cara has very strong and sort after genetics for Spider Monkeys within Australia.

Exploration began to find the perfect milk formula and bottle for the tiny baby, being advised to use a premature human baby milk formula (Premgro S-26), however, no local chemist kept it in stock. We were excited and grateful to discover Maitland Hospital’s premature baby unit stocked the formula which we were able to utilise until our own formula arrived which was kindly gifted to support Tito in his early stages.

Hunter Valley Zoo’s three primate keepers (Daisy, Tasmyn and Sharnie) now solely care for Tito, taking him home, doing his washing and feeding him every 3 hours (even at 2am) just like a newborn baby.

Our major goal at HVZ is to reintroduce Tito into our family group of Spider Monkey’s as soon as he is old enough to do safely to ensure he thrives and excels at his life with us.
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Hunter Valley Zoo have announced that they have successfully bred Maned Wolves for the first time! On the 11th July their female Hija gave birth to two pups. Congratulations to the zoo and for all their hard work with this fascinating species. A real success story for the smaller regional zoos. From their Facebook page:
MANED WOLF PUPPIES

On the 11th of July for the first time at Hunter Valley Zoo, we happily welcomed two beautiful Maned wolf puppies
First time mum “Hija” is doing an amazing job caring for the pups in the comfort of her night dens.

Please note: At this stage the puppies can NOT be seen when visiting the zoo, but we hope in the future Hija will be comfortable enough to bring the pups out and about to meet everyone ❤️
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Hunter Valley Zoo
 
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Hunter Valley Zoo is having some fantastic breeding results with their exotic mammals this year! The zoo has just announced the birth of 1.1 Serval kittens to experienced mother Nia. The regional population is steadily growing and there should be approximately 38 (21.16.1) Servals in the Australasian region. From their Facebook page:
CUTENESS ALERT

Serval keepers are excited announce the safe arrival of two beautiful serval kittens

The little Boy and Girl (yet to be named) are 3 weeks old today and growing amazingly

Mum “Nia” is doing a wonderful job of caring for the little ones in the safety of her night box

Please note

THESE BABIES CAN NOT BE SEEN WHEN VISITING THE ZOO
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WhistlingKite24 said:
Hunter Valley Zoo have announced that they have successfully bred Maned Wolves for the first time! On the 11th July their female Hija gave birth to two pups. Congratulations to the zoo and for all their hard work with this fascinating species. A real success story for the smaller regional zoos. From their Facebook page:

Hunter Valley Zoo
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The two Maned Wolf pups seem to be a male and a female. They have now been named Gomez and Flora.
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