Supporting the Cape Sanctuary’s kākā and kākāriki populations
The Cape Sanctuary is a not-for-profit sanctuary situated in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. The sanctuary combines commercial farm, tourism & forestry with community lead conservation. The Cape Sanctuary is home to extremely rare petrels, has a self-sustaining population of Eastern Brown Kiwi and runs a highly successful Kiwi crèche. The Cape Sanctuary believes in open source conservation, sharing lessons from the Cape with others involved in conservation.
Vetafarm are proud to provide an array of avian feeds to help support supplementary feeding for the Cape’s wild populations of kākā and kākāriki parrots. Read what General Manager Rachel Ward has to say about our diets below.
Nectar Pellets
“Vetafarm generously support Cape Sanctuary’s wild kākā population, by supplying their Nectar Pellets as part of the supplementary diet base. At Cape Sanctuary, our first release kākā was in 2016 – we now have around 85 in our population! We need to continue to support the nutritional needs of the population as our bush is relatively young, so a lot of the old growth forest food sources are not present yet. Kākā breeding is very dependant on available food, so we support them year round to produce annual breeding and grow the Hawke’s Bay population faster. On top of this, we need to keep them anchored to the sanctuary as a safe place to breed inside our predator-proof fenced sanctuary – as incubating females, chicks and eggs are at a high risk of predation if they go elsewhere to breed. As a partial nectivore, Nectar Pellets were the obvious choice to support the liquid nectar and fresh food supplementary feed we offer – the kākā love them!”
Maintenance Diet Pellets
“Vetafarm’s maintenance pellets are an excellent all round solution for base diet health across a range of granivorous parrots, at Cape Sanctuary we use them primarily to support our wild breeding population of red-crowned kākāriki. We need to continue to support the nutritional needs of the population as our bush is relatively young, so a lot of the old growth forest food sources are not present yet. Kākāriki breeding is very dependant on available food, so we support them year round to produce annual breeding and grow the Hawke’s Bay population faster. On top of this, we need to keep them anchored to the sanctuary as a safe place to breed inside our predator-proof fenced sanctuary – as incubating females, chicks and eggs are at a high risk of predation if they go outside the sanctuary to breed. There has been a noticeable difference with the deepening of feather colour and improved feather quality since the kākāriki were switched from a seed based supplementary diet to pellets – there is also less mess and less fighting over the feed! Thank you so much Vetafarm for your contribution to the conservation and recovery of this incredible species in Hawke’s Bay”.
Rachel Ward – General Manager
