An adorable new addition to the Te Puia whānau has arrived – baby kiwi Manawa – the Kiwi Conservation Centre’s first chick in 15 years, born from a recently established pair.
Manawa is now in a nocturnal enclosure which manuhiri can view on a Te Rā tour.
Determining the gender of a kiwi is a long process, with DNA testing required if the bird has not yet reached maturity. Manawa’s feathers were sent down to Massey University for this purpose and a gender reveal cake cutting held at Te Puia this week confirmed Manawa was a boy.
Kiwi Conservation Centre Manager, Tracy Johnson, says Manawa’s parents were in an off-display breeding enclosure situated in the Whakarewarewa Geothermal Valley. The process for a successful chick hatching process involved removing the egg from the nest after 40 days of incubation by the male kiwi, then transferring it to Gallagher Kiwi Burrow, Taupō – a specialist kiwi incubation and kiwi hatchery, run by Save the Kiwi. There it underwent a further 40 days of artificial incubation and hatched on 13 November 2024.
“Manawa returned to Te Puia in mid-December, settling in really well, and can now be viewed in one of our nocturnal display enclosures, in the Kiwi Conservation Centre,” Johnson explains.
“We are absolutely delighted to have reached this milestone and look forward to making a positive contribution to the preservation of our taonga through establishing further breeding pairs.”
Kiwi have been resident at Te Puia since the early 1970s, initially as a rehabilitation centre for injured kiwi, that were received from the wild. The original nocturnal house was built in 1976, and over the years, has delighted many visitors keen to view and learn about kiwi. Te Puia were also part of the national breeding programme up until several years ago and released several kiwi into predator safe areas in the wild.
At the end of 2019, the new state of the art Kiwi Conservation Centre opened, offering an outstanding viewing and educational experience for manuhiri. Incorporating an education area, conservation staff conduct several presentations throughout the day, offering visitors an insight into the many aspects of kiwi conservation, and the work that Te Puia is involved in, including research projects with the Department of Conservation, captive breeding and dog aversion training.
Te Puia is one of 13 parks and zoos around New Zealand that are part of the co-ordinated captive management programme for North Island kiwi, which is overseen by the Department of Conservation (DoC) and the Zoo /Aquarium Association, Australasia (ZAA). Each year the co-ordinator of the programme makes recommendations on transfers of kiwi among all holders to establish new breeding pairs, fill advocacy roles in nocturnal displays, and a small percentage of kiwi are released into predator safe areas in the wild.
Learn more about our Kiwi Conservation Centre here.