The kiwi breeding station

The kiwis I saw in the South Island still concern me. They live indoors there. Have they ever seen the light of day? I don't know it. They definitely have a big enclosure there, but they're just not outside. Kind of a shame.

That's why I wanted to look at something with the kiwis again. The actual plan was to go to a nature reserve in Welligton and do a guided tour there. But it was already fully booked 3 weeks in advance. As a “spontaneous decision maker” I have no chance.

There is a kiwi breeding center in Rotorua. It is also well attended and at the time I booked it was already fully booked, but since I knew the approximate time I would be in Rotorua, I booked an appointment at the kiwi breeding station at the beginning of January.

The appointment was now today! I can say that there are more than just kiwis in here! The terrain was quite amazing. In the breeding station they get the kiwi eggs from the area and hatch them there and then spice up the kiwi chicks a bit. Because half of the eggs fall victim to predators. And of the other 50% where the kiwis hatch, only 5% make it. That's a really low rate. No wonder the kiwi is threatened with extinction.

In the breeding station we were first explained everything about the kiwis. The eggs, for example, are quite large and are often mistaken for ostrich eggs. There are different types of kiwis. The brown kiwi probably hates everyone 😀, lives alone and doesn't care about his offspring at all. Another kiwi species lives together in a community and also looks after the offspring...

The kiwis are seriously threatened by the introduction of maggots, possums and rats. Kiwis cannot fly and therefore live exclusively on the ground.

After the theory in the breeding station came practice. We came into a room and stood in front of glass windows. Behind them you could see the incubators and there were some eggs in them too. In the next room an egg lay all alone in a box. This kiwi is said to be about to hatch. And then we came into a room (again behind glass) that looked very much like a newborn ward in a hospital 😀 . Because on the other side of the window there were several boxes with name tags attached to them. A woman took a kiwi chick out of the box for us to weigh. The little one weighed 300g and looked sooooo cute. I would have preferred to take him with me. The woman also showed us the wing bases, which are so tiny since the kiwi doesn't have any wings.

Outside the facility there is a large area covered with nets, which is divided into many small areas. The kiwi chicks live there for about half a year after hatching. There they are pepped up and then released into the wild.