Rearing Sandhill Cranes at Lee Ridge Aviaries

Abstract

Raising young cranes is a particularly challenging and most rewarding avicultural experience. Great success has been achieved by many zoological institutions in the past 10 to 15 years in raising most of the world's fifteen crane species. However, most of these species have not been available to the private aviculturist, and only recently has he had the opportunity to contribute to the collective knowledge of this marvelous family of birds. We chose sandhill cranes as our first species because of their relative abundance in the wild and hardiness in our cold and harsh climate. We also rationalized that working with a common species lessens the consequences of, or at least the guilt felt from, those fatal mistakes that invariably come during the learning process. Over the last eight years, Lee Ridge Aviaries has worked with fiftynine young sandhill cranes. This includes 41 hatched from our own adult pairs and 18 collected from the wild. We have relied heavily on the experience of others in developing our techniques in incubating, hatching, rearing and disease control, and the references listed at the end of this article have been of particular value. We have improved upon and modified our techniques considerably over the years in an effort to lessen the labor intensity and minimize imprinting of the young birds on humans. This article describes our current process, which experience shows....
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