Kakarikis age

hengeton · Member Joined: Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 7

Hi! I'm wondering that how old kakarikis can live? I have a couple of yellow fronted kakarikis. Somewhere I remember reading that they only live 5 years, somewhere 30 years. Can you tell me?

Steptoe · Site Admin Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 4550

Personally I cant say for certain how long a Kakariki lives
This was discussed somewhere well over a yr ago.
Unbelivablly...there is no conclusive age.
A Kakariki that came to us some time ago, resuced from very poor conditions) I believe was around 10 yrs...(euthenased last week)
Our oldest male kakariki is about 7yrs old with several not far behind and males/ females still breeding.
As to how to tell how old....
Up to about 9 to 12 months, if one is familar with many kakariki, one can pick out the younger birds.
From 12 months to about 5 yrs I cant...I only know because I am awere of each birds recorded history.
The old bird above, certainly had and 'old look' was not as active, over and above the fact it had a hard life.

hengeton · Member Joined: Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 7

I can't find the discussion. Please, can you link it?

Steptoe · Site Admin Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 4550

Run a rorum search for age
Comes up with 2 pages of posts....
there is not realy much more info than I have sumerised above .

Peterlimburg · Snr Member Joined: Sep 14, 2005 Posts: 132

I have a koppel which are 7 years old.
I now that there are birds who are now 12 years and a some months ago there was a kaka male of 17 years old.
He is dead now.

Steptoe · Site Admin Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 4550

I was reading a research paper some yrs ago on the life expectency of animals birds people.
They came up with a therory that each is 'allocated' a given nuber of heat beats in a life time..(cant rem how many)
Those that had fast heat beats (assuming no other aliments/ conditions) lived shorter and those with slow hert beats lived longer.
They also related this to people, those who where fit had slower heart beats, those who where not where faster, and died sooner.
I looked into it, calculating the heart beats of dogs, cats, birds, cows, horses , elephants, fit ppl and unfit people and several other species and it all worked out about right.
From this I do recon Kakarik should have a life expectancy of 12 to 15 yrs

Its only a theory, but the numbers do crunch about right...