The Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) reported on Friday that the Rajkot Zoological Park (RZP) had successfully bred three chicks from a pair of ostriches after the eggs hatched early this month.
“For the first time, three chicks (of ostrich) have hatched in the zoo after around 40 to 45 days of artificial incubation and constant monitoring. Among the three, the first chick hatched on February 3, the second on February 7 and the third on February 9,” a release issued jointly by Rajkot mayor Pradip Dav, RMC standing committee chairman Pushkar Patel, RMC’s parks and zoo committee chairperson Anita Goswami and Rajkot municipal commissioner Amit Arora said. The three chicks are healthy and are under observation, it added.
“Ostriches do lay eggs in zoos in India. But successful breeding is not that common,” Rakesh Hirapra, superintendent of RZP said, adding, “This is a success for us, given the initial hiccups in stabilising the birds in our zoo.”
RZP, popularly known as Pradyuman Park, had procured a pair of ostriches from the ostrich farm of Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University in 2017-18. However, the male had died months later as it failed to acclimatise, park officers said.
Eventually, RZP procured one more male bird from Sakkar Baug Zoo in Junagadh last summer. The pair mated successfully and the female laid around 10 eggs during November-December.
“While the clutch size was almost normal, during candling, we discovered that only three eggs were fertile. We, therefore, kept incubating those three eggs artificially and eventually, the chicks hatched from each one of them,” Hirapara said.
The tallest and heaviest bird species on Earth are ostriches. They can weigh between 80 and 140 kg and reach heights of up to nine feet. Native to Africa, this species of flightless bird breeds in the Savannah. They are capable of running at speeds of up to 70 kph.
The typical clutch size in the wild is thought to be seven to ten eggs. Ostrich eggs are the biggest and heaviest of any living bird species, weighing up to 1.5 kg each.