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Order: Galliformes Family: Phasianidae Chick Type: Precocial (only require parental attendance) In the early 1900's, there were well over a million Attwater's Prairie Chickens that roamed the Gulf Coast Prairies of Louisiana and east Texas, now only around 300 - 400 of them remain. Around 170 of them are in captive breeding programs (Abilene Zoological Gardens, Caldwell Zoo, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Houston Zoo, San Antonio Zoo and Seaworld Texas), and the rest are at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife refuge, a private ranch in Goliad County, and the Nature Conservancy's Texas City Prairie Preserve. Prairie-chickens are omnivorous; their diet consists of insects, flowers, leaves and seeds of prairie plants. Breeding season starts in April, with the males gathering at a booming ground. Hens lay 8 - 17 olive egg with brown spots in a nest on the ground. The incubation time is around 23 - 24 days. Chicks fledge in four weeks. In 2006, the Houston Zoo partnered up with NASA to expand their Attwater's Prairie Chicken (APC) breeding facility to a two acre piece of land on NASA's property at Johnson Space Center. Ribbon cutting ceremony was August 25, 2006. This new partnership provides the chickens are quite place to breed and it also doubles the amount of breeding pens, from 12 to 24. There were three subspecies of the Prairie Chicken; one of them, the Health Hen (Tympanuchus c. cupido), is extinct and the other is the Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus). Some argue that the Health Hen was a different species. Attwater's Prairie-Chickens have been on the endangered list since 1967. Download the APC Draft Recovery Plan from US FWS. Also check out US FWS's questions and answers about the APC Recovery and a video clip of APC's on Youtube. The Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus, Ltd. (STCP), has long been a champion for Prairie Chickens. They first started out in Wisconsin and now have projects in Texas with the APCs. The APC is named in honor of Henry Philemon Attwater, who was a naturalist that worked as a agricultural and as an industrial agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Houston, Texas. He donated several specimens to U.S. natural history institutions and helped with Vernon Bailey's biological survey of Texas. In Texas, Attwater play an important role in early wildlife conservation laws (1903 Model Game Law) and the understanding of the state's natural history (Schmidly 2002). |
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