Anyone ever heard of this????

ksue · Foundation Member Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 270

I am on an aussie parrot forum and I was spaeking to some people about kakariki and a person said they used to own them and had them in with tiels......they never layed fertile eggs for her...one day she went out and a small head was under her wing ...a baby....but she though it looked very big.....turns out it was tiel babies the kaks had taken over the tiel nest and fully raised the clutch....Have you guys every heard of this???

Kaka-riki · Site Admin Joined: May 30, 2005 Posts: 363

Kakariki as foster parents is probably the main reason they survived for so long in Australian aviaries through out the nineties. Once all the money hungry breeders had bred the almighty dollar out of the cinnamon mutation there was no real reason for these breeders to keep Kakariki. But, one well known breeder in N.S.W. discovered that his Kakariki were far better at raising Greencheek Conures than the conures themselves. At that time G.C. conures were over $20,000.00 a pair and prone to kill both their partners and chicks. So the ever reliable Kakariki was used as a foster parent.
I know of one particular breeder who uses Kakariki to hatch and raise his Lorikeets in the early stages. Once the birds are 2 weeks old he hand raises them but in the early stages the Kakariki do a great job. I have also heard of breeders using Kakariki as foster parents for both Eclectus and Blue fronted Amazons in the first couple of weeks. Kakariki will raise just about anything that pops out of an egg. I say almost because to date I haven't heard any success stories in Kakariki raising emu's. Think

ksue · Foundation Member Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 270

LOL that would be somehting i would like to see!!!!! I had heard they were good fosterers but to take over a nest that was what surprised me.....she must have been deperate to be a mother Shocked

kakasa · Regular Member Joined: Jun 23, 2005 Posts: 24

I have successfully used Kakariki as foster parents many times with great success. The only problems encountered are with the different growth rates between the Kakariki and some of the other birds in the same nest.
Asiatics take a lot longer to fledge and risk being squashed by the quicker growing Kakariki babies so this often means fostering the baby Kak's or handraising some.
Another problem can be with birds like quakers where the young lay on their backs when they hatch and the Kakariki cannot feed them.