KARACHI: Karachi Zoological Gardens staff members are eagerly waiting for the hatching of the eggs laid by an ostrich hen a month ago, as the successful hatching may lead to an increase in the number of the large flightless bird, currently numbered only three at the zoo.

Animals and birds, according to sources, had laid eggs quite a few times but the one or two hatchlings that did come out could not survive.

They said the zoo had lost one male of the same species last year and was now left with two female and one male ostriches. The animal reportedly died after swallowing a plastic bag, said the sources.

Speaking to Dawn, Dr Kazim Hussain, senior vet working at both zoo and the Safari Park, said ostrich hatchlings were known to have a low survival rate in the world and the same problem persisted in the zoos across Pakistan.

“Generally, incubators are used to hatch ostrich eggs. We have also got good results when we used the facility to incubate peacock and pheasant eggs. However, prolonged loadshedding, as we are experiencing these days, render the facility useless as the embryos are suffocated to death due to a drop in temperature,” he said.

Experiences with mechanical incubation for ostrich eggs had not been successful mainly because of frequent power outages, Dr Hussain said.

“The Safari Park, too, has three ostriches but we couldn’t have a chick growing up into an adult. What is crucially important, though, is to have fertile eggs and for that animals should be kept in pairs separately and given a balanced diet,” he said.

He said the zoo was relying only on natural incubation this time and was hoping to get good news in 10 to 15 days.

Answering a question about how the zoo found new pairs of ostriches when it lost its old stock, he said this was done through tenders.The population of ostriches in the wild has declined drastically over the decades, according to information available on the internet. However, its range remains very large and the flightless bird is being farmed commercially all over the world, including Pakistan.

It is, perhaps, because of these reasons that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the BirdLife International treat it as species of ‘least concern’ with the exception of S.c.camelus, a North African species, which has declined to a point that it is included in the CITES Appendix 1 and treated as critically endangered by some.

The ostrich is farmed particularly for its meat, which is high in protein content but very low in cholesterol and fat, feathers and skin.

Ostrich eggs are the largest of all eggs, over 20 times the weight of the common chicken egg.