New baby for Pu¯ kaha
The Pu¯ kaha National Wildlife Centre kiwi nursery is open for the season.
Last Tuesday morning
Pu¯ kaha welcomed the 102nd kiwi chick to be hatched at the wildlife centre. Pu¯ kaha rangers and volunteers have collected four kiwi eggs from the Pu¯ kaha forest so far this season and have begun the very delicate and specialised incubation process in the kiwi house nursery.
The rangers will carefully turn the remaining three eggs four times a day while maintaining the temperature at 35.5 degrees Celsius until they hatch.
Pu¯ kaha National Wildlife Centre is part of a national Kiwi recovery programme, Operation Nest Egg, which involves uplifting kiwi eggs from the wild to improve their chances of survival against predators such as ferrets, stoats and rats.
They are incubated, hatched in the nursery and hand-raised to a weight of approximately 1.2kg, fighting weight, before being released back into the reserve.
Visitors can expect to see the kiwi chick hatchling over the next two weeks once head kiwi ranger Jess Flamy decides it is ready to start its introduction to the captive kiwi diet. Once they start on this feeding regime the public can watch the feed daily at the 12pm kiwi talk. The Pu¯ kaha rangers will continue the kiwi chick feeding until they are confident the chick has accepted the diet and is eating it on its own. Chicks are then transferred to the “kiwi creche” or outdoor enclosures were they remain until their release.
“We are all pretty excited when the eggs start hatching,” General manager Emily Court, says. “The team are ready to gather up visitors in the reserve should an egg start hatching during opening hours. It is an extraordinary thing to witness.”