Zoo News - Flamingo chick update

Well, next to me here is flamingo chick number three for the season. So, this little guy is 12 days old now. The really exciting thing about this guy is
potentially he's a new generation for us. The chick that we raised three seasons ago has paired up with the female that laid this egg, so, we'll have to do some DNA testing
to confirm, but, yeah, potentially that's really exciting, and we've got a new generation of flamingos.

So, this is flamingo chick hand-rearing formula. So, there's all sorts of different vitamins
and things in there, there's fish and prawns, some egg yolk and a lot of human baby food as well. What we don't want is for this guy to completely imprint on us, so, we try and not talk to him as much as we can and when we're here feeding him, we'll just play him adult noises. This little guy is getting fed six times a
day.

Today he's up to 30mls per feed, so it's quite a lot for a little bird and then that increases every day, so, they really do get a lot of
food in the first month or so. As with most youngsters, he doesn't like being cleaned. So, now that he's all fed and relatively
happy, he's quieted down a bit now, we'll go and check the other two out. So, these are obviously the older two, who
are looking much more like flamingos now than their younger cousin over there.

So, this big guy is almost two months old now, and the little guy here is about six weeks old and as you can see on the big guy, he's starting to get his pink feathers through, so he's looking more and more like a flamingo every day. Of course, there's a big size difference now between these guys and the little one, so we might have to wait until the little one has grown up a wee bit before we integrate these guys all into the exhibit. So, in the next month or so, we'll start getting the three of them over to start meeting some adults..