Hoiho chick hatching - a world first in hospital
We recently achieved a world first by incubating and hatching Hoiho/yellow-eyed penguin eggs in hospital. These beautiful manu are classed as nationally endangered and their population is steadily declining. While ultimately it is always better to leave wild animals in the wild, sometimes it is not possible due to such low numbers. Intensive management and intervention is needed in these cases to try to save the species from extinction. A huge number of organisations collaborate together and are working extremely hard to try and prevent this from happening to these taonga.
Hoiho chicks are at high risk of contracting two deadly diseases when they're very young. Hand-rearing for a short period at this young age has proven to be successful at managing severity and in many cases preventing the diseases occurring. All of the chicks that hatched in hospital were hand-reared for 7-10 days before being returned to the wild for foster parents to take over the hard mahi of getting the chicks to fledging age.
We thought you'd all enjoy this video of hatching. We now know that it takes a Hoiho chick on average 48 hours to get out of the shell once it internally pips. Hatching is an exhausting process!!!
A massive shout out to our friends at the Department of Conservation for loaning us one of the toroa egg incubators to care for the Hoiho eggs and a huge thank you to our friends at Kākāpō Recovery for donating a hatcher for the chicks.
If you would like to support us to continue doing this important mahi for our native species please check out our Christmas Store. All proceeds from sales go straight back to caring for our patients: https://www.wildlifehospitaldunedin.o...
Department of Conservation
Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust
Penguin Place - conservation reserve
Massey University
University of Otago
Otago Polytechnic
Penguin Rescue