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.
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.
from the 2017 news thread, a flamingo has hatched at the zoo: Auckland Zoo - Auckland Zoo News 2017 Press release: Flamingo chick hatches at Auckland Zoo
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?
five? There's the one from 2014, and is there not only three this year? Or did I miss one? 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!
