RAMPHASTIDAE
Fundació Natura Parc, Psittacus USA Inc and Psittacus Catalonia SL.
Fundació Natura Parc (Mallorca), Psittacus USA Headquarters (Miami)
February 2022
PUBLICATION(pending)
Proposal to be confirmed
Preliminary analysis
Planning & Design
Realization
Analysis and interpretation of the results
Publication of the results
Birds of the family Ramphastidae can be very prolific in captivity, but often do not incubate and/or do not breed their hatchlings correctly. This means that the practice of artificial incubation and subsequent hand-rearing is widespread in breeding centres and zoos.
However, the hand-rearing process is complex, especially due to the fact that the commercial foods currently available do not adequately cover the needs of these birds.
A determining factor is the physical characteristics of the food to be given to the chicks. These birds are "programmed" to receive solid food (fruit, chicks of other species, invertebrates...), not to receive liquid food. This is why supplying hand-feeding is not a suitable feeding procedure for them.
The use of complete food with the appropriate characteristics may represent an important advance in the results of captive breeding of all the species of this family.
This project aims to lay the foundations for a new hand-rearing protocol for this group of species, which is safer and easier to apply, and which at the same time substantially improves the results of the rearing process. This new protocol will have as a fundamental axis the supply of a complete food in gel format that, at the request of the Psittacus Foundation, will be developed for this purpose by the R&D team of Psittacus Catalonia.
- Simplification of hand-rearing work
- Improved growth rates
- Improved bird health
- Maximisation of chick viability rates
- Improvement of the final characteristics of the birds reared according to this protocol (weight, size, quality of plumage...).
