Some other Incubation and Bird firsts.

I wrote in another article about the ostrich firsts. But there were a few others in incubation. I had some requests to visit poultry clubs in New Zealand,  and as we had the Bellsouth 100 being very successful here and we were anxious to try it there as well. 

Jenny and I headed off to NZ to speak at a number of poultry clubs, our first trip overseas together and the first time we had left the children. We did a number of the tourist things including the Fairy and Rainbow Springs Trout farm at Rotorua. I managed to speak to the bird curator there about incubation matters. They ere attempting to incubate Kiwi eggs, but with no success. There were all sorts of theories about how etc, but no success.  I offered to give them a Bellsouth 100 modified for the egg size just as we had done with the ostriches.  I set out a plan to work on first principles on the assumption that the bird body temperature is pretty similar to other birds. I laid out the plan including egg turning, moisture levels and so on, after all no results from other methods why not try mine. Its a long period of incubation but in due course success. The chicks hatched un-assisted, neat and clean and survived well. I was written up in the Fairy Springs annual report. ( I will post the picture when I find it)

At that time we travelled and I looked in on several other places with live Kiwis but none had successful breeding programs.

A few years later I visited NZ again for another lecture tour this time with the children all in tow. I visited the Wellington zoo and discussed their program. They were getting a very limited amount of success.  One thing they did not do was turn the eggs, because in their view eggs were not turned in the natural burrow. I asked about the actual cycle of life and it turns out the kiwi prepares the burrow by cleaning it out  before laying the egg. "The bird lays the egg and then as time goes on the burrow fills with leaf litter. This stops the egg from moving. The last half of the incubation cycle its impossible to move the egg in the burrow so we don't turn the egg in the incubator." says the curator. I don't recall the incubator but it was a large wooden machine.  I suggested that the thinking was wrong. In  bird special the eggs being turned is the equivalent of feeding the chick, as the embryo moves to a different place in the egg. If you don't turn the egg the embryo dies. So my guess is the eggs all have embryos, that is are fertile, but all the chicks die only a short way into the incubation process. All they knew was the eggs were always rotten. It is always difficult to overcome the hope that this one will get through, and even with chickens people will not break out eggs to see if they are fertile after a week rather than wait to the end. Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping doesn't cut it. Experimentation is a must  I suggested they break one out after a week and see if you find an embryo. When it dies, it allows  the egg to rot. An infertile egg usually wont rot. ( same in chickens). I suggested that maybe the kiwi in the burrow was able to do the usual temperature regulation in the first half of incubation by rolling the egg as the burrow was clean and that stopped when the burrow was full. So the egg could be turning for half the time, and we knew chickens turned for half the incubation period had quite good hatch rates. And the temperature stability and leaf litter insulation of the burrow means that once the eggs generate some of their own heat they probably don't need to be kept warm by the kiwi. 

A while later I received a call from the birds curator to say I was right they were now consistently using that technique and getting good hatch results. 

I continued to ask around and could not find any consistent artificial incubation results from before that time. I did visit one place some years later when I was involved in ostrich and emu egg exports to NZ. The pictures on the wall of the chicks hatching were pretty gruesome and showed temperature and humidity problems, but I was an Aussie and we don't have kiwis so what would we know. But he had been doing it for many years and knew all about it with great success.  Not if those pictures were anything to go by!

Another first was  a trip to Cocos Islands in the Indian ocean. I was there because the animal quarantine station was there and the first batch of importation of adult ostriches were in quarantine there. ( that was another firs but I was on the side-lines)  The cost of freight of the live birds was far greater than eggs. The syndicates wanted to know if the facilities could be adapted to hatching large volumes of eggs, and rearing the chicks. This  would take a lot less space to rear for the balance of the quarantine time, (incubation being considered part  part of the time)  and also a lot less cost in freight compared with the adult birds.  It's an interesting place to visit, and there was considerable work needed to establish the facilities and the staff to operate. The incubation period is pretty laid back  Load the incubators, and then be on call if anything went wrong, perhaps conducting so egg research while a large volume of eggs are incubated all at the same time, all in al out process.  The examination and discussion took only a few days, and then rather than fly back with commercial,  I was to fly back in the air  freighter, a 727  fitted out for horse transport.  So some spare time to explore, visit the other islands,  and people watch, and if you are that way inclined join in the evenings at the club house the only watering hole on the island. I didn't have diving gear so that was out, but I explored a bit. Along the way I started to see while driving these chickens along the road. Slow down and the disappear into the deep scrub. One day I saw a whole batch down by the radio antennas on the listening station. It is all mown there and a group of birds were out in the middle . I jumped onto the back of the ute with the camera and got the drive to round them up slowly moving around the group trying not to scare them. It was back in the slr film camera days so I only had one roll of film.  I took some reasonable shots, but we got close enough to know there were not mongrel commercial chickens of  red jungle fowl, but green jungle fowl. There is a wild life officer on the island as it is all bird sanctuary. The official records say they are red jungle fowl, and after some discussion I at least planted the seed of doubt in the mind of the wildlife official.  We flew the next day to Australia in the back of the plane, but that story is told else where. 

A few months later, a gentleman turned up at the shop and asked to see me. He wanted to know about the identity of these birds. He was one of the Australian bird counters who do a survey every year of all the species on the island as apart of a research census. The wildlife officer had told them of my visit and the discussion over red or green jungle fowl.  Could I support  the statements. If course come have a look at the reference library. Reference works showing  Red jungle fowl, with a  single serrated red comb and 2 wattles, and the  Green jungle fowls have single rounded comb, part red part yellow, no serrations, and only a  single wattle. Very different. "But can you prove that there were on Cocos?",  " There  is the photo on the wall,  I took from the back of the ute."  "Can I have the print?"   Sure, and a few months later a copy of Wingspan arrives with an article of the discovery by Jim Finger of a new species on Cocos Island.   Great kudos, but the natives really new they were there. They cross them with the domestic fowl, the offspring are infertile but they have a very long drawn out crow, much prized in Indonesia and Malaya. So I like the kudos, but I really only identified them.

But the recognition was great, but it didn't help me with what followed. As these birds are on an official quarantine station, I figured that many birds would be tested before the ostriches  were allowed to be bought in. If they carried any of the nasty virus like H5 N1 we wouldn't want the ostrich exposed as they would then have to be destroyed. They were tested, but when I asked for the possibility of a change of protocol to live birds  rather than import eggs, the answer was "we will look at it."  After asking for a few years and getting nowhere with AQIS I had a new person  receive the file. In response to another letter to them , I receive a phone call for some discussion. But I was asked a question" why do you want to do it?"  Why does that matter?  To them its odd no money to be made just a conservation project, what is the motivation. I explained that I had made a living from the small end of the industry, the pure breed conservationists and bird lovers. This was a unique special, vulnerable, deserving of preservation in Australia where we have none of the diseases of the area to the north of Australia. Besides these bird lovers are my customers, and I figure that if I can import and protect this species, new to Australia, then my business will get some pretty good  news  reports ( no internet back in those days but it would have been even more if there had been). " is that all" I was asked "Well what did you think" I said.  "We just couldn't figure out what was the angle. Leave it with me we will see what we can do". But  a few weeks later fire ants hit the news, a major quarantine issue,  and soon after Avian Influenza blew up somewhere else in the world with a real risk of it arriving here. I received a short letter saying " Existing protocols only". Another great opportunity missed. So close but yet so far. One of my failures.

I must admit there was another idea in the back of my mind, a dream idea. I have read the old Dutch authors from the late 1800's and early 1900's before WW1. The natural history types wrote up every new species and all sorts of cultural practices of the inhabitants.  They described the wood burners who went up into the jungle to make charcoal. They would live in the jungle for long period felling the trees and the burning them in slow piles to make charcoal. They would take their "domestic" fowl with them, I assume for laying some eggs, and to eat a few. The Dutch  record that they tethered the females so the green jungle males would come down and mate with them for the long crowing male offspring. The offspring were rated as infertile, so they were reared, while  the females to be eaten. Al the  males  taken back if they were good crowers or eaten if not. But there are reports of the occasional cross of domestic and green jungle fowl being fertile.

Imagine that!  All the research I have read still doesn't manage to explain where the extra genes come from that produce all the colour variants and a lot of the feather pattern and shape variants.   Pure breeders today are having a problem with loss of genetic materials in the close bred  exotic colour pattern compared with the 1800's hen fever period. What if that one fertile cross would reinject enough genetic material to  rebuild some of the old lost breeds?   It was a question I would have invested heavily in to try to get an answer.   One of those I never managed to do.

And as a addendum to that. Someone in AQIS decided that Green Jungle Fowl Gallus Gallus Various are in fact "Australian" species and placed them on the official list of Birds In Australia. It now  allows that if someone wants to smuggle them from Cocos to OZ or even worse from Indonesia, and uses the excuse they found them somewhere on the mainland who can say they are wrong?  Sometimes legitimate lawful attempts to do what is right are stymied by Bureaucracy, , the exact same bureaucracy then makes it easier for the smugglers and cheats.  I never cease to be amazed.

I add the pictures when the rise to the surface of the collection again.   Jim Finger 2021