MOHALI
: The Mahendra Chaudhary Zoological Park boasts of breeding rare species of wild birds through artificial incubation and hatching techniques. As part of wildlife conservation initiatives, the zoo has conducted around 70 successful artificial hatchings this year alone.
The
Chhatbir zoo
has achieved another milestone by successfully standardizing the artificial incubation and hatching techniques for wild birds in a scientific way – a rare phenomenon for the zoos in India, said Punjab’s chief wildlife conservator Kuldeep Kumar.
In line with the Punjab CM’s instruction at State Board for Wildlife meeting held recently, the zoo is working on a dedicated breeding unit for pheasants and partridges, he said.
Zoo field director M Sudhagar said, “After a trial in 2017-18, this year the zoo’s avian artificial breeding unit has produced more than 70 chicks in scheduled species like white peacock,
Indian peafowl
, red jungle fowl, kalij pheasant, Mongolian pheasant, golden pheasant,
chukar partridge
with 70% success rate.”
Health management of wild animals is one of the core activities of captive centres, particularly zoos, because when wild animals are kept in a confined environment, there are chances that their naturalistic behaviour is disturbed. When behaviour is affected, their physiological parameters get disturbed, leading to an adverse impact on their breeding behaviour, said Sudhagar. “But, by providing a nearsimilar natural environment to the wild animals with naturalistic enrichments, Chhatbir Zoo has achieved a major breakthrough in breeding of wild animals,” he added.
The technical team at the zoo is now well equipped to analyse the breeding behaviour and give special attention to improve breeding potential of scheduled, rare and endangered wild animals in captivity, he said. Initiated with the study of blood profiling of carnivores and brooding behaviour of birds, the species-wise process is being executed in a phased manner. Result being the successful breeding and birth of more than 190 offspring of many species in the last three years, such as black bucks (Punjab’s state animal), swamp deer, mouse deer, Manipur deer, sarus crane, kaleej pheasant, white peacock, parakeets, partridges and ducks, while many zoos are trying hard to breed some of the named species.
The reason for the success in Chhatbir Zoo goes to latest managemental practices, diagnosis of issues, proper sex ratio, feeding enrichment, off display and isolation in oestrous period, peripartum and postpartum care, and special care of young ones, he said.
Also, rarely when the young ones are rejected by their mother, they are immediately isolated and shifted to neonatal care unit at the wildlife hospital for hand-rearing.
Experts from Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University and
Indian Veterinary Research Institute
have been engaged to study and suggest breeding improvement in lions, tigers and reptiles. If everything goes well, the Chhatbir Zoo may get some tiger and lion cubs next year, he added.