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 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.
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?
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.
These may well have been shared before, but just in case some links on the importation Vero Marine - Auckland Zoo's flamingos http://www.flamingoresources.org/docs/literature/hand_rearing_wwt_auckland_jarrett.pdf
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.
I hadn't seen the first link before, interesting! The second link doesn't work at all for me, but I'm guessing its to the 2006 International Zoo Yearbook paper about the import?
Sorry, I accidently deleted part of the url, it should work now http://www.flamingoresources.org/docs/literature/hand_rearing_wwt_auckland_jarrett.pdf
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!!
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?
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.
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.
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).
