Is That Flamingo Egg Talking?

Jul

As we hope you read in our first post just a few days ago, we here at the Houston Zoo welcomed 10 Chilean Flamingo eggs not long ago.

Once they arrived, we had to make sure they were kept in the right environment. To do this, we put the eggs in an artificial incubator. This machine keeps the eggs at around 99 º and rocks the eggs gently side to side once every hour.

The incubator with flamingo eggs inside

When our eggs arrived at the zoo, we carefully candled them (we held the egg up to a bright light to see what the developing embryo was doing) and then placed them in the incubators. While the egg shown in the picture is not a flamingo egg, it still shows the embryo and the development of a chick in the eggs (the dark circular spot near the center is the chick’s eye).

"Candling" the Flamingo egg to see the baby bird developing inside

Since the chicks’ hatching was looming, we also had to set up the room where they would spend the first several weeks of their life: the brooder room. This is much like setting up the nursery when a new baby is coming home! Laundry has to be done, dishes have to be washed and beds have to be made. We wanted to make sure everything was perfect for the new kids.

New chicks are generally brooded (or kept warm) by their parents. To simulate this we use “brooder boxes,” small plastic boxes that have a heater source to keep the chicks warm and comfortable. For the flamingo chicks, we have been using brooders from www.petiatric.com; the owner was very kind and managed to get 3 new brooders shipped to Houston in just 2 days, so that the little flamingos’ homes would be ready.

One of three new brooder boxes to help the babies grow

One of the eggs had externally pipped on the way to Houston. During the drive, Cory could hear the chick vocalizing in the egg. This egg was placed into a hatcher – a machine that keeps the humidity high and the temperature at a constant 99 º, the optimal temperature for a hatching chick.

As we placed the egg in the hatcher we could hear the chick vocalizing and see the egg rocking back-and-forth from the movement of the chick. We had the good fortune to get a little snippet of it to show you!

Make sure to come back for the next post to follow the chick’s progress. What do you think happens next?

The Official Houston Zoo Blog