Elegant Crested Tinamous, found mostly in Argentina, are football shaped ground birds with fancy hats.  Tinamous are usually shy and elusive birds. When it comes time to breed the female will lay her shiny green eggs in a ground nest under the shelter of a bush. It is then the males’ job to incubate the eggs and care for the chicks.

Vividly colored Tinamou eggs

Our breeding pair of Tinamous here at the Houston Zoo, located in the Fischer Bird Gardens, has successfully provided us with an abundance of fertile eggs. Since the male has not yet shown interest in incubating them, our bird department team took over and placed the eggs in an incubator.

This past July 2 chicks hatched and almost immediately began exploring the world (inside their brooder box that is). Tinamou chicks hatch looking remarkably similar to the adults, and even have a starter crest.

Adult female

Hatched chick on day 2

To hand raise the chicks we are feeding them a combination of pheasant starter pellets, chopped fruits, egg and insects. As a keeper, it’s our job to provide the food and clean accommodations, but the chicks are able to feed themselves almost from day one.

Lunch!

We keepers mostly get to sit back and watch their crest grow! You can see why they’re called Elegant Crested…

By day 10 it's crest has nearly doubled in length!

These birds always make me think of something from Dr. Seuss…  Can you see it? Tell me in the comments below!

Written by Samantha Montgomery

 This year, our pair hatched a chick on July 24th after about 25 days of incubation. Even though the parents are raising the chick, we still do our part as keepers to help them.

We give them a special diet three times a day, made up of chopped apple, bananas, sweet potato, carrot, corn, and grapes. Also, parakeet seed mix, sunflower seeds, and a crunchy pellet.  Yum!

Fresh and nutritious!

We occasionally get the chick out of the nest  box to see to it’s well being. When we do this we get a weight and check overall health. We will also put a band around the chick’s leg so that we will be able to identify it when it is older.

Attaching a leg band

When the chicks fledge (leaves the nest box), you will be able to see them on exhibit, right across from the flamingo exhibit, around September  10th.

He’ll look a LOT different by then!  Come check the little guys out.

Written by Jessica Clark

Chick 6 (or “Green Head” as we marked him) is a little bit of a bully.  It was one that had to be kept in a brooder alone (but still next to all the other chicks) because every time we would put them all together, 6 would chase around and bite the other ones.  Until one day about 2 weeks ago….

We weigh the chicks every morning and every evening to make sure they are growing well.  Also, we carefully monitor their hydration and food intake.  About 2 weeks ago, Chick 6 was not gaining as much weight as everyone else and the chick’s appetite seemed to decrease.  About a day after we started really watching 6, we noticed that he (or she) sneezed a lot — but was otherwise active and lively.

The next morning was a completely different story!  When the keepers came in, Chick 6 was coughing and sneezing constantly, and having a really, really hard time breathing.  We called the vets immediately.

Without delay,  Chick 6 was moved to our vet clinic.  It seemed it was pneumonia.  The vet staff placed  it in a special holding area where it could receive oxygen constantly and be nebulized 4 times a day.

The little guy in a nebulizing chamber

The chick was still having trouble breathing, so the vets put in a “air sac canula.” This is basically a tube that is put into the air sac (on the side of the body) that allows the chick to breathe easier — a little like a person getting a tracheotomy.  This helped Chick 6 a lot! He was able to breathe a lot more and not be so stressed.

After a week of treatment (both oral antibiotics, anti-fungal medication and aerosolized medication for the chick’s lung), Chick 6 was able to be move to a holding area with out the oxygen.

The chick in it's holding cage

Just like the other chicks, Chick 6 got it’s exercise by running around to keep it’s strength up.

As it got better, Chick 6 got more strength and was able to play for longer periods at a time.

On Friday, August 13, Chick 6 was returned to the department to live with the 7 other flamingo chicks.  Yay!  He still has to be kept separated from the other chicks – but now it’s just because he’s still a little bit of a bully!!

The now-healthy chick, with Dr. Lauren Howard and Dr. Maryanne Tocidlowski

Currently, it’s recommended that for a healthy lifestyle everyone should get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day.  This is not only true for people, but it is also true for our growing flamingos. 

Since flamingos have such long legs and grow so very quickly, it is easy for them to outgrow the strength of their legs. They have to be monitored each day to make sure they’re gaining enough weight, but not so much that it could possibly cause too much strain on those spindly gams. 

2-day-old chick

34-day-old chick

Above you can see just how dramatic their growth is. As they do, we provide them with that much more space to move around. Though the chicks may start in small plastic brooders, they soon take up residence in outside pens where there’s plenty of  space to flourish.  But even though they are in a larger area, we still have them get additional exercise in 2 main ways:  swimming and walking. 

The spacious pens mean room to grow

To help keep up their strength,  they are set out to play several times a day in a small swimming pool.  This allows them to bathe, eat, and socialize together. 

We also have them walk around the off-exhibit area to develop their coordination and make their legs strong.  They have learned to follow us and we use this to get them to run and play!

The next step to making sure they get enough exercise is taking them for longer walks – like out to the Flamingo Exhibit to swim in the large pool, and also to be introduced to the adult flamingos.

We can’t wait to have you see it, so stay tuned for the next post!

 Flamingo Hand Rearing Formula (Diet)

 720g Infant rice cereal flakes (soaked in water)
720g Shrimp
720g Smelt/Capelin (whole/thawed) – heads/tails/fins removed
720g Hard-boiled egg yolks
1 cup Vionate
1 cc Thiamin-Vitamin E paste
~12 cups water 
 

1.) Soak Rice cereal in water (according to directions) – set- aside 720 g of soaked rice cereal

2.) Peel shrimp and dice, blend well with ~1-2 cups of water

3.) Take heads, fins, and tails off of the fish, dice, blend well with ~1-2 cups of water

4) Blend egg yolks, vionate, and thiamin with ~1-2 cup of water

5.) Mix all ingredients together and blend well

6.) Strain formula and blend remainder, strain again.

7.) Divide up into smaller batches to freeze. Fresh made formula will keep in the fridge for 24 – 48 hours

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!

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!

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? 

Liberty, the Houston Zoo's majestic, dignified Southern Bald Eagle

Adapted as the official symbol when George Washington became the first President, the Eagle  appears on most of our gold and silver coins and as an emblem in many of official United States seals. It’s also used decoratively for many patriotic purposes.

The Bald Eagle was chosen for it’s appearance of strength and represents freedom. You might get a little choked up to see her. Our viewing deck is raised so you are often eye to eye. 

This weekend might be a little rainy, but it’s  a great thing to do throughout July.  Come to think of it, why not just make her part of your visit anytime of the year?

If you’ve seen Liberty yourself, are a fan of the Bald Eagle, or are feeling partiotic as we approach the weeken, please tell us and all your fellow readers about it in the comments section below.  It’s easy, and we’d love to hear from you!

Written by Rochelle Joseph