Sacramento Zoo welcomes 4 flamingo chicks. How do bird keepers help them grow?

Four baby flamingos have cracked out of their eggs at the Sacramento Zoo in the past month, and more may be coming.

The zoo in William Land Park is home to 48 adult Caribbean flamingos, also known as American flamingos, in addition to the four chicks, according to lead bird keeper Kristene Hirsch. The chicks are born with white feathers and turn fully pink over three years, Hirsch said in a phone interview.

“It’s pretty amazing watching them grow up and watching them kind of figure out, you know, how to be a bird,” Hirsch said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

She said at least one flamingo chick has hatched each season at the Sacramento Zoo since she began working there in late 2016. Two flamingos born at the zoo in 2017 — a male that zoo staff named Blue Hawaiian and a female named Mai Tai — have since mated, Hirsch said.

They had one chick in 2023, dubbed Patriot since it was born on July 4, and a second one last year that died. One of the four chicks that have hatched so far this summer — on June 19, 20 and 24 and July 4 — belonged to Blue Hawaiian and Mai Tai, Hirsch said, although the flamingo family did not have another Independence Day hatching.

This season, she said, the zoo’s flamingos laid 22 eggs in all. Four remained unhatched Thursday afternoon. When the bird keepers expect an egg to hatch, they check for marks signaling that the chick inside is trying to emerge, according to Hirsch.

“Unfortunately, we do have to help them,” she said. “Because we’re in such a dry climate, the membrane inside the egg usually dries out, and that restricts movement of the chick to hatch out on their own.”

The zookeepers leave a “dummy egg” with the protective parents while a chick hatches elsewhere with human help, Hirsch said. Then the parents take over nourishing their baby with a red substance called crop milk, which both male and female flamingos can produce.

A flamingo can typically stand up on approximately its third day alive, Hirsch said. Chicks are at risk of dying early on, so their keepers do not name them before they have survived for three months.

“A month is great. Sixty days is even better. Ninety is like, you can kind of relax,” Hirsch said.

The Sacramento Zoo has not waited to celebrate the new bunch of flamingo chicks.

“Who’s new at the zoo? Baby flamingo chicks that’s who!” the zoo said on social media last month, sharing a photo of adult flamingos attending to a newborn. “Stop by the Sacramento Zoo to say hello to these adorable new additions!”

“It’s cuteness overload here at the Sacramento Zoo!” read a post Monday showing a fuzzy white chick.