Posts Tagged ‘flamingos’

Dec
26

12 Days of Grub: Day 12 – Twelve Flamingos Flocking

Posted by in Birds,Gift of Grub,Holidays

On the Twelfth Day of Grub, your zoo gift will help to feed…Twelve Flamingos Flocking, Eleven Meerkats Mobbing, Ten Chimps a Chasing, Nine Fruit Bats Flying, Eight Giraffes a Galloping, Seven Snakes a Slithering, Six Mole-rats Mining, Five Golden Frogs, Four Calling Birds, Three Wild Dogs, Two Grizzly Bears, and Darwin the Cassowary! CLICK HERE to read them all!

Chilean Flamingos Feeding at the Houston Zoo

 

Here at the Houston Zoo, one of the most beautiful sights is our large flock of Chilean Flamingos. These brightly-colored birds are social, vocal and highly interesting. Amazingly, the size of our flock is nothing compared to the spectacular gatherings these birds would naturally form in the wild; Chilean Flamingos are known to form flocks numbering into the thousands!

 

Flamingos have grooves along the edges of their beaks used for filtering small food items from the water

Without question, one of the most intriguing aspects of these unique birds is the way they feed. Flamingos have a specialized beak designed to help “filter” small plants and animals out of the water, which are then consumed and metabolized to create the striking pink coloration! Flamingos will take in a mouth full of water (along with whatever happens to be in the water), and then use their tongue to push all the water through special grooves on their beak. The result is a mouthful of food that these birds will then eat!

Here at the Houston Zoo, our flamingos are fed a variety of different pelleted diets (depending on the time of year and their current metabolic needs). These pellets are made to be nutritionally complete, which could easily help contribute to the fact that several of our flamingos are in their forties and fifties!  Our flamingos also receive krill, a small species of shrimp that is relished as a treat.

A large group of animals can prove to be ravenous; Chilean Flamingos are no exception. Our flock of birds readily eats through 50+ cups of pelleted diet per day. In addition, 5lbs of krill per week are consumed by our flamingos. When temperatures hit lows in the winter, these amounts are increased to keep up with the metabolic needs of these amazing birds.

Give the Gift of Grub by December 31 to help provide our flamingos and the rest of the Zoo’s 6,000 animal residents with all the tasty and nutritious grub they need to stay happy and healthy in the New Year! 

Thank you to TXU Energy for generously matching the first $25,000 in donations this year!

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Feb
17

Avian Enrichment: Flamingo Flock Gets Krill

Posted by in Birds,Enrichment,Everyday Enrichment

Everyday Enrichment: Making Life More Interesting For Our Avian Residents – Part III

Anyone who has been lucky enough to visit the Houston Zoo recently has most likely gotten a glimpse of enrichment and has an idea of how it is used to better the lives of the macro-mammals at the zoo. However, problems arise with the fact that some of our animals really have no interest in interacting with their human caretakers. When that occurs (as is typical with many bird species), keepers must think of new and innovative means to keep our animals mentally fit.

These are our Chilean Flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) enjoying a snack of krill. This is actually a special treat for our flamingos since they do not get the krill (small shrimp) on a regular basis; instead, our birds are fed a nutritionally-complete pelleted diet that is designed to provide the proper balance of vitamins and nutrients to provide them with everything they need. Also, our birds get different pelleted diets at different times of the year to provide for the variation in metabolic needs that is associated with the breeding season. However, krill are certainly one of the favorite food items and there is no reason why a favored food item can’t be offered in moderation. Here at the Houston Zoo, we readily use the favored food items of our animals to enrich them, train them and encourage them to take active part in their own husbandry.

This instance was actually the first time that the newest editions to our flamingo flock had ever gotten krill; as you can see, they are a bit intimidated by it at first. Flamingos are a prey species, which means that their instincts tell them that anything new should be treated with caution as it could be a potential predator. However, our 6-month old flamingo chicks (noted by the grey/black plumage) eventually pluck up the courage and take to eating the krill with gusto.

Take note of the distinctive stained-glass artwork and the artificial concrete trees visible in the video – the flamingo yard is one of the oldest exhibits in the zoo and these objects are wonderful examples of the obvious appreciation for aesthetics the Houston Zoo has had with regard to animal exhibits. Of course, when guests come to the zoo they can typically look past these unique items of zoo history and simply stare mesmerized at the beauty of our Chilean Flamingo flock. Of course, we also have scheduled flamingo feedings several times a week and also encourage guests to consider “adopting” a flamingo to help provide for the care of these amazing animals. For our guests who can’t seem to get enough of our feathered friends, the Houston Zoo offers “Flocking,” a fun and interesting way to help support avian conservation!

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Oct
28

Flamingo Chicks: Not Such a Baby Anymore

Posted by in Birds

Our Flamingo chicks are growing  rapidly.  In addition to all living together in the same pen, they are starting to eat their Flamingo Chow readily.  The adult flamingos are fed a special diet called Flamingo Breeder pellets made by Mazuri, a company that specializes in zoo food.  These pellets are specially formulated to meet the nutritional needs of the flamingos.  They also contain some of the micro-elements that help the flamingos maintain their pink coloration.

Flamingo chick now eating in the pool

 As the chicks grow, their bill takes on the “normal” crooked shape of a flamingo beak.  They also start to develop the fringe on their beaks and tongues that help them filter feed 

Close up of a flamingo chick beak

And their wing feathers start getting pink too.  They won’t get completely pink for about 5 years; but over the next several months they will go from mostly grey to mostly pink.  

A flamingo chick stretches it's wings

 Since our chicks are getting so big, it’s time for them to spend more of the day learning to be “real” flamingos. 

Flamingo chicks in the pool with the adults

So we are now taking them to the pool in the morning to eat with the adults – but do not fear, they will still be walking back to their off-exhibit home for a little while longer to be babied. 

So check the zoo’s daily schedule to see when our flamingos go on their walk because before long,  they will be all grown up.

 Written by Hannah Bailey

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Aug
02

Growing Up Flamingo: Swimming and Feeding

Posted by in Birds

Flamingos grow-up quickly… sort of… they will need us to help feed them for at least the next 90 days – so they will still be babies in that sense.  However, in just a span of 3 months they will grow from being about 10 inches high to being over 3 feet tall.  Growing this quickly means that we have to keep a close eye on the development of the flamingo’s legs. Flong-legged birds, it is very important that the chicks do not outgrow their leg strength.

Flamingos hatch out with very dense white/gray down.  This down helps them keep warm and dry.  It also makes them very buoyant.  When chicks are just 2 – 3 days old, the parents will often taken them for their first swim.  Swimming is great exercise for baby flamingos, as it helps their legs develop properly. To mimic this, we start swimming the flamingo chicks when they are just a couple of days old.

The Fuzzy Bunch takes their first swim!

Swimming is just one form of exercise that the flamingo chicks receive.  Several times a day they are placed in “play-pens” with all the other chicks. This allows them to start interacting with others and also show off their ability to bathe themselves (a behavior that they start almost from the time they hatch).

Each flamingo chick has its own distinct personality. Some are very sweet, others like to bite.  This distinction can be seen when they interact with each other. Watch this:

One of the other ways we definitely notice the chick’s personality is when we’re feeding them. Some of the chicks will sit quietly and eat, others like to run around the table.  Some don’t mind if the formula is warm, others want the formula to be exactly 104.6º or they throw food every where. When you’re feeding a formula made of pureed fish and shrimp, having the formula spit back out on you it is not necessarily a pleasant experience. 

A wee bite of the hand that feeds.

This little one needs a napkin.

Now here's how you eat politely!

We’ll share this delictable recipe in the next post, for those among you who are conniseurs… and show a delightful demonstration of just how it’s made, so please stop back!

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Jul
20

Is That Flamingo Egg Talking?

Posted by in Birds

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? 

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