First Lesser Adjutant chick of season 2010/2011 hatched!20.10.2010:  Yesterday, after a long month of waiting while the parent birds dutifully incubated their two eggs, the first Lesser Adjutant chick of this season hatched and is now well taken care of by its parents!
Over the past years, the ACCB team has been working to establish a captive breeding group of Lesser Adjutants at the centre consisting of individuals that are not fit for release. The group has already grown to currently 30 individuals, the largest captive group worldwide. Lesser Adjutant is very rare in captivity worldwide (e.g. outside Asia there are only a couple of holdings with less than a dozen birds), and at present there is no coordinated international breeding program for this threatened species.
In 2007, first eggs had been laid which unfortunately proved to be infertile, likely because the birds were still too young. These large birds are thought to reach maturity only when they are four or five years old. However, in 2008, the first chicks hatched, and several more since then. So far, in 2010, two pairs have nests and one or two further pairs are expected to start breeding in the coming months. Most of the birds at ACCB are currently still too young to breed, but as they mature over the next years, more breeding pairs will be established. Back
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