Black palm cockatoos

Our Breeding and Research Center (BRC) has successfully hatched two chicks of the largest cockatoo, the Black Palm Cockatoo.

BRC has produced two clutches in 6 months, with a single egg in each clutch. The two eggs were artificially incubated approximately 30 days, and the two chicks were hatched successfully with assisted hatching.

Also called the goliath cockatoo, black palm cockatoos are known to have relatively low rate of reproduction, compared to other species of Psittaciformes in the wild. Females only lay a single egg per clutch and wild black palm cockatoos are observed to only have one clutch every 2.2 years. Cockatoos have a mean of 0.11 fledglings per pair of adult per year due to infrequent egg laying, the destruction of nests by forest fires, and predation of eggs and chicks (Murphy et al, 2003).