A special gender reveal party is being planned in Queenstown.<\/p>\n
It is being organised by staff at Kiwi Park Queenstown to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of their new kiwi chick, which hatched on March 26.<\/p>\n
General manager Richard Wilson said the \u2018\u2018genetically distinct\u2019\u2019 eastern provenance brown kiwi, classified as \u2018\u2018conservation dependent\u2019\u2019, was the first successful hatching at the park in two years.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s massive \u2014 it\u2019s so exciting. It\u2019s a new life for a national icon.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Department of Conservation Whakatipu operations manager David Butt said of the four types of brown kiwi \u2014 Northland, Coromandel, eastern and western \u2014 the eastern, of which the population numbered about 6900, needed the greatest support.<\/p>\n
The Queenstown chick belongs to dad Anzac \u2014 who completed the impressive 78 days of incubation and was present during the hatching \u2014 and mum Atawhai, both 8, who were in \u2018\u2018great health\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
Wildlife curator Todd Jenkinson said it was \u2018\u2018fantastic\u2019\u2019 the wildlife team had managed the breeding pair to see out a full-term incubation, while wildlife head Beth Millican said staff had \u2018\u2018lost some sleep to the excitement\u2019\u2019, but watching the breeding pair become parents had been \u2018\u2018a joy\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
Happily, the new arrival was also thriving.<\/p>\n
Mr Wilson said the chick weighed 176g at birth and is putting on an average of 9g per day \u2014 as of Tuesday it weighed 304g.<\/p>\n
It would be on display at the Kiwi Park until it was old enough to contribute to its breed and release programme and would ultimately be released into the wild.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You can only hold North Island browns on display throughout the country, so anything that we breed here goes back to its origin back in the North Island,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
The first priority for park staff, however, was finding out the chick\u2019s gender \u2014 which required feather testing \u2014 and deciding on its name.<\/p>\n
Mr Wilson said the moniker would be decided in conjunction with iwi and Doc, but he already had some inspiration.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018We\u2019ve obviously just celebrated our 40th anniversary here at the Kiwi Park, so it seems the right fit and timing to name it something to do with the 40th celebration.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Perhaps, then, R\u016bpi would be fitting if the chick turned out to be a girl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A special gender reveal party is being planned in Queenstown. It is being organised by staff at Kiwi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-395374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}