The Jacanas are a small tropical bird-family rarely kept in zoos. Breeding results with these birds are even rarer and I know of only 2 collections which have been succesfull : Emmen and Krefeld. I would like to know which other zoos / birdparks have bred these most intresting birds ?
The Avicultural Magazine, 1983, reported breeding of the African Jacana at Slimbridge the previous year. This is said to be the first breeding of any jacana species in Britain. (Unfortunately I don't have the full article to hand: it was written by someone called Hodgson and is entitled "Rearing the African Jacana Actophilornis africanus at the Wildfowl Trust, Slimbridge")
Thank you very much for that ! I have a load of Avicultural Magazines somewhere so I have to look if that one is among them.
Do the successful places keep more than just pairs? Maybe the fact that they are polyandrous makes it more difficult to induce breeding in captivity.
References to the UK breeedings African Jacana Avicultural Magazine 1983 volume 89 number 2 pages 67-68 Wattled Jacana Avicultural Magazine 1997 volume 111 pages 55-56
According to the Avicultral Society UK first breeding list the first breeding of African Jacana in the UK took place at Slimbridge WWT in 1982,and the first breeding of Wattled Jacana in the UK was at the late Raymond Sawyers private collection in 1994!
At the beginning of the century Burgers Zoo bred with wattled jacana, hand-reared, and the breeding was not always sussesfull...
Found this intresting note about the breeding of the Wattled jacana at Chestnut Lodge by Raymond Sawyer : The 1994 breeding of the Wattled Jayana Jacana jacana was thought to be another UK first breeding. If jacanas are provided with the right conditions they will thrive, wrote Raymond, but if they are kept in poor conditions foot problems are inevitable. The pair at Cobham bred in an aviary which housed birds up to the size of the Purple-throated Fruitcrow Querula purpurata. This jacana is, wrote Raymond, much tougher than the African Jacana Actophilornis africanus though, of course, in a bad winter it ought to be shut inside at night. At Cobham they were usually able to walk them in at night or sometimes they went in on their own accord. Raymond was fascinated to observe that the male did almost all the work. He built the nest with only partial assistance from the female and incubated the eggs. Raymond never saw the female on the nest. When the chicks hatched the male carried them in his breast feathers. The female remained in the background, but if a Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus appeared on or above the aviary, she would come forward and attempt to defend the chicks. Apart from this, she took very little part in the proceedings and the male almost seemed to resent her coming too close to defend the chicks or interfere with them in any way. In the centre of the pond there were rocks and also lilies and blanket weed and it was there that the nest was built. The eggs were a beautiful shiny bronze colour. This species can easily be sexed by the fact that the female is larger than the male. The young can also be sexed by their size. They attained full colour after about 18 months. Although jacanas are not as aggressive as stilts and avocets, the breeding pair did drive off the old jacanas that Raymond had in the aviary and the latter had to be removed. Four young were reared in 1994 and three in 1995. Raymond tried the tiny chicks with mini-mealworms, but was uncertain what they ate at first. Within a few days, however, the mini-mealworms were being taken. Getting the young jacanas onto an artificial diet was not too difficult. They had to mix livefood in with the softbill food and then be patient. The main problem was that it was expensive to supply unlimited livefood in a large mixed aviary.
Jacanas are suited to rainforest type tropical houses: seed the enclosure with breeding populations of invertebrates perhaps?
