Posts Tagged ‘hatching’

May
11

Darwin’s Hatch-day and Other Bird Business

Posted by in Birds,Birthday,Events

One of the Houston Zoo Bird Department’s biggest birds, Darwin the Cassowary, is celebrating his 6th Hatch Day!!!

Cassowarys are the third largest bird in the world (after Ostriches and Emu), and Darwin stands about 66 inches tall. Darwin is a big bird with a big appetite, and he loves fruits. In celebration of his hatch-day, we’re giving Darwin a giant fruit feast! Join us on Saturday, May 14 at 10 a.m. in front of Darwin’s exhibit to watch him scarf down his hatch-day fruit and to sign his card!

Also on May 14th we will have a bird-themed Photo Day – the Avian Adventure. You definitely won’t want to miss this action-packed event. The bird Keepers have outdone themselves with a full schedule of events -

7:15 am – Breakfast, Rainforest feeding and Meet the Keeper Talk in the Tropical Bird House

7:45 am – Duck Lake Feeding and Meet the Keeper Talk

8 am – Flamingo Feeding and Meet the Keeper Talk

8:15 am – Vulture Feeding and Meet the Keeper Talk

9 am – Golden Conure Bathing and Meet the Keeper Talk

May 14th also happens to be the national migratory bird celebration! With so many avian events happening this weekend, we can hardly wait!

Tags: , ,
Jul
23

A Flamingo Chick’s First Day at the Houston Zoo

Posted by in Birds

5 AM on July 2: The first keeper to arrive in the department checked the hatcher. It was a special day, because they found our first hatched flamingo!!

July 2, 5 AM: The first flamingo chick hatches

Flamingo chicks hatch out covered with very thick white or grey down (they are the softest chicks we have ever had).  Their legs are pinkish and they have completely straight beaks.  They look so very unlike adult flamingos that the first time you see one in person it is a little shocking.

The first two flamingo chicks. As you can see, they don't look like you'd expect.

After the chick dry off from hatching, we check their umbilicus site (basically a bird’s belly button) and make sure it is clean.  We also weigh the chicks.  The first chick weighed about 85 grams or 3 ounces – this is about half the weight of an I-phone.

The chick's belly button. Look at those little feet!!

For the first 24 hours of a baby flamingo’s life, it gets nutrition from its yolk sac (the yolk part of the egg is absorbed into the digestive system).  Just to make sure the chick stays well hydrated while it continues to absorb its yolk, we provide the chick some warm fluids about 8-10 hours after it hatches.  Then it goes back into the brooder box until its first feeding the following morning.

The chick getting warm fluids about 8-10 hours after hatching

When the chick has absorbed its yolk fully, we begin to feed it a diluted formula.  This formula is specially made for flamingos out of shrimp, fish, baby cereal, egg yolks and vitamins.  The formula smells awful, but is very good for the growing chicks. So finally, about 12 – 24 hours after the chick hatches, we give them their first taste of that food.

The little one after it's first feeding.

Please come back to read and see what’s next in the life of our flamingo chicks!

Editors note: Please let us know what you think of these little beauties in the comment section. And please share their story on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. We’ve made it easy for you to do; simply click their links just below!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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? 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,